


Testing Grounds

by paintstroke



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Acceptance, Codenames, Crossover, Developing Relationship, Feelings, M/M, Partners to Lovers, Sex, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-04-11 17:49:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19114684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintstroke/pseuds/paintstroke
Summary: Earth and its colonies are struggling to survive. The encroaching Galra empire threatens to extract the energy, the quintessence, of the ‘primitive’ human-held planets. The strongest defense the Garrison Alliance has against the Galra are the advanced Starfighter forces, piloted by elite pairs: navigators and fighters. A formidable balance between highly trained Earth pilots and reactive Martian soldiers.Atlas.Once, Shiro had held a command position, but left it to fly among the stars as a navigator. Now, despite the emotional and physical tolls of past battles he’s determined to prove himself yet again.Prometheus.Keith survived on the martian colonies through a mix of instincts and luck. The Garrison Alliance held the promise of freedom from a hard life.Neither expects this to be more than a simple mission. And neither expected to find someone they could actually care for…[A Sheith story in the Starfighter universe]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Starfighter is an ongoing, erotic mlm comic by the incredibly talented HamletMachine, featuring space gays with a much darker background than Voltron. You can read it for free online [here](http://www.starfightercomic.com). It’s been incredible to watch the story and art grow over the last ten years. The first chapter has some dubious-consent/boundary-ignoring situations and is a lot rougher than what follows.
> 
> Huge thanks to my Sheith Prompt Bang partner Crysonoe! You can find them on [twitter](https://twitter.com/chrysonoe/), [tumblr](https://chrysonoe.tumblr.com) and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/chrysonoe/) and I would 100% recommend following them for cute art! They encouraged me so much throughout this writing process with little sketches, headcanons, and patience. It’s been an absolute joy to get to know them!
> 
> A shoutout to [the cry of the seagulls ](https://twitter.com/cryofseagulls)for letting us continue to use their Atlas/Prometheus ideas as a starting point when I joined this prompt.
> 
> And a final thanks to the mods of the Sheith Prompt Bang, for putting together so many creative ideas and to @Dimplelegacy in particular for encouraging me to pick up the pinch hit for this particular one.
> 
> I'm on twitter at [HerPaintstrokes](https://https://twitter.com/herpaintstrokes)

* * *

  


 

“Be _nice_ to your navigators. You need them.” The drill sergeant’s voice is hoarse. He’s got one arm overhead, fingers twisted through the webbing, braced against the waves of disruptive motion the maneuvering thrusters send through the small troop ship. “If I see any of your ugly faces back in basic training you better believe that the last six months will look like a fucking vacation.”

Keith’s heard it before. All the fighters have. The only difference is that now there are only ten of them, jammed shoulder-to-shoulder on the spartan benches of the transport shuttle. They are the most promising, the best of the best, the ones that had earned places in the most advanced attack ships the Alliance had to offer. The starfighters. His own spot here had been hard earned, through long months of basic and aerial training, and despite clashes with both fellow recruits and instructors. He'd barely managed to avoid expulsion. And now they were heading out to one of the space stations along the barricade, relief fighters. Even achieving that honor wasn't enough to free them from a last lecture. Then again, according to the rumors, the sergeant is stuck supervising their transport because on the last one a brawl left three of the fighters needing medical attention.

Keith tunes out the sergeant’s words. It’s not like he needs any outside encouragement to try to avoid being sent back to Mars in disgrace.

Keith keeps his head down, staring at the two small metal tags that represents his new life. Their edges are thin and smooth under his thumb. _Prometheus,_ the inscription reads. His new task name engraved on the back of the Garrison Alliance’s star and chevron. He feels like the name sits awkwardly on him, too long and ungainly. But here they were all just anonymous recruits wearing the masks of legends. Interchangeable. He knew the task name of the navigator he’d been paired with —Atlas— but nothing else.

Eventually the troop ship shivers. The whisper of a forcefield slides along the hull, and the fighters look up. They must have reached the station. The soft hiss of the braking thrusters is followed by a deep rattle that shakes the entire shuttle. The vibrations in the hull drown out the drill sergeant.

Predictably, someone jumps at the opportunity to run their mouth off. 

“Whole ‘lotta bullshit just to waste some Galra,” the fighter at the end of the bench mutters under his breath.

“I ain’t being ‘nice’ to spoiled brat earth navis. They can learn their fucking place. They need us, too.”

“Plenty of ways to be ‘nice’.” The guy across from Keith leers, showing teeth in a mockery of a smile.

There’s an undertone of grunted agreement, but the fighters fall silent before the thrusters cut out.

Keith stays quiet. Dealing with the fighter culture has been the largest price he’s paid for his ticket off Mars. His survival tactic has been to just keep his head down and let the most aggressive assholes posture against each other. That, and carrying a big knife. Most of the time they left him alone.

The back half of the ship opens into a ramp, hydraulics clanking and hissing as it settles into place. The light from the hanger bay is piercingly bright compared to the shuttle's minimal running lights, the sharp white glare prevents Keith from seeing anything at first.

“We’re walking into the light already,” the fighter beside Keith jokes darkly. A few of the others force laughs, but out here on the spindly station, far from any sheltering planet, death already seems closer.

The sergeant glares them into silence; but the fighters are more bold than usual with the waning threat of his power over them. Now that they’ve touched down in the space station, they’re officially meant to be answering to the lead fighter there. Excitement vibrates through the air. Skilled hands suddenly fumble with their safety harnesses, and for the last time they let the sergeant shout them into ranks at the base of the ramp.

Keith tries to stay at attention and keep his eyes forward, but there’s a lot to take in. The station’s flight deck is enormous and sleek, better maintained than anything orbiting Mars. It gleams. A skeleton crew of maintenance workers move fuel lines between the ships, dwarfed by the sheer size of the station. From the corner of his eye, he can see the starscape looming huge to their side; the forcefield a mere shimmer between them and the dark expanse of space. The slow spin of the stars beyond is cold and beautiful.

One of the station’s lieutenants approaches to give them their orientation. Their drill sergeant gives them a final salute. His expression softens as he steps back into the transport. “Good luck out there, cadets.”

  


* * *

  


Orientation takes forever, and Keith is happy to be dismissed to find his quarters on the station. He wasn’t expecting this, though.

The room sprawls. It’s clear in a glance that the Alliance hasn’t shied away from spending money out here.

There’s absolutely no comparison to the training barracks. This isn’t just a warehouse jammed full of cots. The sense that it’s too good for him creeps along the back of Keith’s neck.

There are two narrow beds with a shared dresser in the wide space between them. A private bathroom through a door on the left. Everything looks pristine. A window stretches along the wall above the beds, slatted blinds casting long horizontal shadows. He drops his bag and heads over to it. When he gets close he can see it’s not a window after all, but a lit screen. He touches the panel at the side and the diffuse light shimmers into a sunny cityscape behind the blinds. Then the desert-like martian dunes. A night sky.

He shouldn’t be shocked by it. Technology there just for the sake of having a screen in the room. A part of him doesn’t want to wrap his head around it and what it means in comparison to the oppressive frugality of the colony.

He unpacks mechanically. The only thing he has that isn’t Garrison Alliance issued is his knife, and that he carefully tucks under his clothing.

The soft noise of the door makes him turn. He expects it to be his navigator. He doesn’t expect someone so tall or well-built. The jokes about the navigators being soft and weak must have been tongue-in-cheek. The man radiates power, and Keith just stares up at him for a moment. Instead of washing him out, the white uniform and the silver of his hair make him seem pure; untouchable. He radiates power and confidence, and Keith pulls self-consciously out of his own slouch.

His voice sticks in his throat. Recognition floods through him.

Grey eyes briefly meet Keith’s stare, then drop down to the tablet in the navigator’s hand.

“Hey. I’m Atlas. Prometheus?” Even in the casual words, there’s subtle sense of authority, someone used to power and obedience.

Keith nods once, searching Atlas’s face to see if the navigator gives any sign of recognizing Keith. Atlas seems polite, and reserved, the very picture of professional dignity. Keith accepts that what had changed his life wasn’t likely something that registered to the higher-ranked soldier. It’s a slightly bitter pill to swallow, but he’s used to being no one. 

Atlas extends his prosthetic smoothly, the metal moving as easily as human muscles. “Nice to meet you.”

Keith wipes his own hand discreetly on his leg. He’d been in space for months now, but he can’t help feeling like he’s still leaving red powdery dust on everything that he touches. The prosthetic's metal is smooth against his skin, and the articulated joints bend carefully around his hand.

“It’s an honor,” Keith manages to say, scrambling for words as he lets the handshake linger a moment too long.

“So they said, I’m sure.” Atlas rubs a hand along the back of his neck as he backs away. “You want that side?” He nods towards the side of the room where Keith is still standing awkwardly.

“Doesn’t really matter.” Keith suddenly isn’t sure what to do with his hands. “If you want it…?” he offers.

Atlas just shakes his head and drops his bag on the other bed. He pulls out his clothing, moving efficiently between the bed and dresser. Pale shirts and pants are placed neatly beside Keith’s own dark outfits.

The silence gives Keith more time to contemplate.

What does _be nice to your navigator_ even mean? Even after months of training with the fighters Keith isn’t sure. He’s not good with people. He knows this. He never had been. Keith’s never felt it so painfully before.'Nice' came with unspoken rules back in the fighter’s barracks - rules that were closer to the familiar gangs in his old colony neighborhood; the trading of bribes, of favors, of protection. He’s sure that some fighters will continue try to impose that brutal hierarchy on the navigators as well. It's not his way, though. It never has been.

He blows out his breath sharply, looking at the wall. It gives him no answers.

“Leave it on the stars, maybe?” Atlas asks.

“Hm?” Keith looks over to where Atlas was finishing settling in.

“The screen.” Atlas gestures to where Keith is standing.

Keith would have guessed that the navigator would have requested one of the Earth scenes. But then again, he didn’t really want to stare at Mars. At least the stars are somewhat truthful.

He flicks back to the starscape. He should say something - he hates this though. He’s struggling. “Have you been out here long?” Keith asks.

“On the station? A few months now. I’ve been helping some friends in the lab while command looked for a new match for me.” The navigator gives a small smile. “Glad they found one. I look forward to flying with you.” Atlas’s tablet beeps and the navigator groans. “I thought I’d get a bit more time to move and get to know you,” he says, the tone giving Keith an apology. He folds his empty bag and puts it into the drawer as well. Keith didn’t catch sight of any personal effects. “Do you have anything else scheduled today?”

“Uh. Dinner in Mess Hall B, then inspection with the lead fighter here.”

“Ah. They’ll probably try to have our schedules sync up better soon.” Atlas gives his tablet an annoyed glance.

Keith nods. After all, that’s the whole reason why they’re supposed to share rooms with their flight partners, to know each other so well that in battle they work seamlessly together.

“I’ve got to run,” Atlas says, pausing at the door. “Let me know if I can help with anything.”

“Thanks.”

  


* * *

  


It’s a relief to slip into the routine of the station. Compared to basic training, it almost feels like freedom. Sure, Keith’s days are heavily scheduled. But having his own room and his own free time give it a shine that has yet to wear off. The curfews were simple to avoid, and there was the aching satisfaction of a routine that focused heavily on physical activity.

It doesn’t seem like Atlas’s prediction of them having more time together is going to come true anytime soon though. It’s been a week and he barely sees the man. He’s not sure what he feels when he hears the others talking of getting ‘closer’. Jealous? Worried? Atlas hadn’t been kidding about the lab keeping him busy. Keith may not be sure how he feels about the lack of an interpersonal relationship, but he’s definitely jealous of the time in the simulators that the other pairs manage to get.

It’s not really worth thinking about, though, since he can't do anything about it.

Keith grabs a tray, the goo in the square bowl giving an unappetizing wiggle at each step back to the table. He could see the other recruits that had been transferred with him. Fresh from training, they seemed to sit more stiffly, more formally than the strangers that had been on the station for longer. He picks out the groups of twos and threes, the ones that had been closest during Basic.

In the end he just heads to an empty table. All he needs to do is choke down the calories and head back anyways. He’s not here to make friends.

He pokes at the last of his food, wondering if the navigators eat the same slop.

“Oi. Prometheus.” Keith looks up. Another fighter drops onto the bench across from him, knocks Keith’s tray back towards him semi-aggressively.

Keith pushes back, irritation heating his temples. The other fighter seems oblivious though. He leans in casually, like they’re friends. The confident way he moves makes Keith think he's been on the station for some time.

“So you’re the one that got paired with the old-timer.”

There’s derision in the words. “What of it?” Keith asks, eyes narrowing. Atlas wasn’t that much older than either of them after all, maybe a few years at most.

The fighter smirks, gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Sucks to be stuck with used goods.” There’s something mocking in his dark eyes. A second man sits down, more graceful, slipping to sit maybe a little too close to the first man for how much open space there is on the bench. He stays silent, eyes down, hair half-covering his expression.

_Used goods…_ the phrase makes his stomach turn. Atlas hadn’t treated him with anything but respect and kindness. Thinking of him like that… He’d seen time and time again how passionate denial led credibility to rumors. Maybe if he acts like he doesn’t care… “Experience counts for something,” Keith says tightly in a knee-jerk defense, nostrils flaring.

“Ha. Tell that to his last fighter.” Cain draws a thumb across his neck, the meaning clear.

Keith reminds himself that he can’t get sent to the brig. He can’t launch himself across the table. He _needs_ this paycheck. But red starts to streak his vision with the effort of holding his temper. He forces his hand to flatten when all he wanted to do was connect a fist. Still. Words. Records. If he knew who was insinuating this… “And you are?”

The other fighter lifts a spoon of the unappetizing sustenance, apparently confident that Keith’s not going to cause a scene in the mess hall “Cain.” Keith’s heard the task name. It’s one of a few that gets brought up whenever anyone talks about the last attack on the station, before Keith arrived. He’d saved another ship in that battle. “Got some free advice for you on the rules here,” Cain says, pointing his spoon at Keith.

“We went through the rules already. At orientation,” he says, purposefully ignoring Cain’s meaning. He forces his words to seem mild.

There’s a hard tap at the table, and Keith’s eyes flick to the source of the noise. Keith catches sight of a knife at the quiet one’s wrist, and looks sharply up at his face. Through a sidesweep of dark hair, the mousy man gives a Mona Lisa smile and taps his lips for silence.

“ _My_ rules,” the spiky haired man corrects Keith, his charming smile at odds with the threat. “Well, one rule. There’s a navi with a scar on his lip...”

Keith looks over at the other half of the mess hall, the navigators' side. He’s honestly can’t bring anyone to mind, they blend in, especially with all those pale mods that are in fashion earthside. Aside from Atlas’s prominent bridge scar he hasn’t really noticed anyone... But now that Cain’s saying it, he thinks he sees the man. It’s hard to miss the dreamy way he’s staring over at their table, or the quick way that he looks down at his food when he sees Keith and Cain look back at him. Cain gives a low little laugh at that, almost fondly.

“Yeah, him. He’s mine. You don’t fucking talk to him, don’t even look at him. You leave him alone we’ll get on fine. Plenty of other dick when you get bored of the old man.”

“I’m not here for dick.” Keith feels his ears start to burn. Is his orientation that obvious or does this asshole say this to everyone?

Cain snorts. “Say that again when you’ve been out here longer than a week.” Cain’s entire expression seems to suggest something lewd. He raises his thumb to his lip as if to brush off a crumb, but pushes the tip of it into his mouth suggestively. His raised eyebrow challenges Keith. 

  
He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what this jerk thinks of him, but Atlas is different. Atlas deserves better than to be thought of like that. Keith drops his cutlery back onto the tray and stands. “Have some advice from me, then, _friend,_ ” he mimics Cain’s too-casual tone. “Say anything else about my navigator and I won’t be so understanding.” He turns. He knows his own knife handle is visible at his belt line. He’s shaking with anger. He doesn’t want to leave it with that and his years of military training barely counteract his own impulse to lash out. He can’t go back to jail over this asshole and his silent shadow.

 

* * *

 

The new fighter -his fighter- lingers by the door, as if surprised to find Shiro in their room. Shiro feels a bit of guilt at that. He _had_ been busy… but he had also been trying to avoid their quarters unless he was sleeping. It was easier that way, if he didn’t have to feel sharp edge behind Prometheus’s quick gaze. He doesn’t need to be reminded that the outside world sees him as broken. 

Still. He’s nothing if not practiced at hiding his emotions. Shiro turns to the door and greets him with a smile. “Don’t mind the mess,” he said, conversationally. “I’ll try to keep it contained on my side.” Shiro pries another panel off of the wall, and clicks a thick data port into place . The cable snakes over the floor to a laptop, joining other tangles of wires and electronic manuals on the floor. “Commander Holt locked me out of the lab so I took some work home with me,” he says, almost to himself. He’s learned not to expect much from Prometheus in the way of conversation.

He expects Prometheus to head back out, but when the door closes Prometheus is still inside.

Prometheus’s wary attention reminds Shiro of a cat. The fighter remains aloof, but Shiro can feel that gaze raising the hair on the back of his neck. Prometheus is quiet as he approaches, but Shiro is acutely aware when he steps closer.

“Why are you locked out?” Prometheus asks.

Because he sounds genuinely curious, Shiro decides to answer. His own smile turns wry. “I was racking up too much overtime,” he admits.

“Is that where you always are?”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. Prometheus had noticed his absence? He figured the fighter would be grateful to have a bit of space. Privacy was rare to come by out here. “Most of the time.”

“You must really like your job.”

Shiro softens slightly. “I love flying,” he hesitates, “…and I’ve got friends working on some interesting projects in the lab.” The stilted conversation still feels like the inevitable result of throwing two strangers into a room together. Then again, he’s not getting the contemptuous dismissal he’d expected from a fighter. Shiro taps at his laptop, calling up a simple simulation. “There’s a team in the lab working on modifications to the starfighters - theoretical ones, mostly. They can program the expected results into the simulation code. I offered to help test the results.” Knowing one of the major families in the Garrison Alliance power structure has certain perks.

Symbols and coordinates flicker to life on the navigation globe in front of him. It’s pretty much an exact copy of the one that he would use to control an actual starfighter, but here the inputs and outputs both connect back to the laptop. He calls up Lieutenant Holt’s files, looking over the additions and modifications the Alliance was currently tested. The code runs across the screen instead of a simulated view. He doesn’t fully understand the programming, not like Matt or Katie might, but Shiro had been flying for so long that he could instantly visualize the scene in the space around him.

He gestures at the spherical interface.

“Do they show you much of this when you go through training?” Shiro asks.

“Not really. Just a few pictures,” Prometheus admits quietly.

Shiro considers that. “Do you want to see how it works?” he asks. The back-to-back design of the two-seater starfighters keeps the navigator and the fighter spaces separated. If something ever happens to him, he thinks that there’s a few overrides the fighters have to get control of thrusters, just the very basics to get them out of harm's way. But as far as he knows there’s never been an instance of a fighter having to take full control of navigation.

Prometheus edges towards him, tentative, like the globe could be dangerous. Shiro assumes that the tech itself is intimidating until he turns. His breath catches in his throat, because for a moment he can see the passionate interest in Prometheus’s gaze as the fighter focuses on the screens. There’s a sharp intelligence there, but he can almost see the guards go back up as the fighter turns his attention back to Shiro.

“When I was younger I wanted to take the entrance tests to be a navigator.” There’s a wariness in how Prometheus is looking at him. Shiro wonders how he can reassure him.

“Yeah?” Shiro’s mouth curls into a small smile. “Did you try them?”

Prometheus gives an angular shrug, than shakes his head. “My dad died when I was pretty young. It was hard to keep up, after.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Shiro feels his heart start to melt. From all he’s heard about the colonies it was a tough life. It was the reason so many fighters came from Mars - those survival instincts were crucial in battle. But so many of the rumors had felt unbelievable to one raised on Earth.

Prometheus is standing close enough that Shiro can see the sadness as he looks away. The muscles around his jaw flicker with tension. “I got out in the end.”

The words seem like a deliberate attempt to prove he’s fine on his own.

The way Prometheus looks at the screen is a clear signal for Shiro to drop it. Shiro ignores it instead. He reaches over to give Prometheus’s shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “I lost my parents when I was young, too.” He doesn’t need to dwell on that though, not now. Prometheus’s shoulder tenses before he relaxes. He sits in the silence for a moment, but it feels less harsh now.

He considers what he knows. Prometheus is a talented fighter, maybe the best. Fast reflexes. Commander Iverson had thought he was something special. “If you still want to see what navigation is like, we’ve got something better than tests and books here. Hold on a moment,” he says, and heads over to the dresser. He comes back with a new set of gloves and passes the pale leather over to Prometheus. Shiro holds up his bionic hand. “They wired this so that it can control the globe, but sometimes I end up with a normal pair in my requisitions.”

Prometheus strips off his own fingerless gloves before slipping the white material over his hands. He looks at them with a strange expression on his face. “Come over here.” Shiro cues up a basic flight program. He points out their icon at the center. He touches the sphere with his prosthetic, puts his other hand on the back of Prometheus’s, guides it towards the globe.

He ends up pressed behind the fighter, keeping them in tightly together. Prometheus fits easily against him, and Shiro looks over his shoulder to the nav-globe and tries to keep his attention on the task instead of how close they are. It’s difficult. He’s half-starved for touch out here, and part of his mind just screams for him to pay attention to the incidental contact between him and his fighter.

“Curl your left hand for thrusters,” he instructs, voice low. Prometheus’s hair move as he speaks.

As Prometheus moves under his guidance, he can feel the tightly corded muscles of the man in front of him. He smells like the same soap they all use but there’s something unique shines beneath it, and Shiro tries to reel back his thoughts.

The tension slowly leaves Prometheus as he copies the movements that guide the little simulated ship in lazy loops. It takes very little time for Prometheus to become confident with the controls. He flies how Shiro imagines a fighter would fly; bold and direct. Of course, Shiro reminds himself, there are no stakes here, the enemies are only red triangles on a view screen.

Prometheus watches the screen with a single-minded intensity.

Shiro wonders just what the man would do if he was given control of a ship.

It would be something to remember.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

The simulator pod has the same sleek lines as the starfighters themselves. Inside, the cockpit is a near-perfect replica, suspended between the gears and hydraulics that can mimic the forces they’d experience in the real thing. 

Muscle memory sinks in for Shiro and he runs a hand gently over the rear-facing hatch. He twists and lifts the handle, the hiss of escaping air as familiar as a lover’s caress. He’d been training intensely in the simulators at the navigation labs, but not in full builds like this one. And not with a proper partner. Not since the _Kerberos._

The air that rushes out is stale, rank with the sweat; traces of stress and anxiety and fear. And in some ways, Shiro welcomes that reminder that this isn’t his ship, isn’t real. The _Kerberos_ had been as close to immaculate as he and Janus could keep her. It settles something in Shiro. He’d done plenty of training missions while they’d been fine tuning his prosthetic. They’d thrown as many distractions as they could at him. He’d practically lived in the partial simulator while in recovery, forcing himself to train until he surpassed his own records from before. 

_Before_... Thoughts of the accident still put him on edge.

“This is where you should tell me not to fuck up your scores,” Shiro tries to distract himself by turning to Prometheus. He wonders if it’s possible to escape the dread that he’ll do something that injures this fighter too. _Pilot error._ The words have been etched into his mind. 

Prometheus doesn’t seem to have the same worries. He meets Shiro’s gaze, and there’s no hesitation, no fear. “You say that like you’re not a hero already.” He leans against the catwalk’s railing, waiting for Shiro to drop into the pod before he makes his way to his own compartment. 

The trust and conviction shakes him more than it should. His stomach drops. Shiro’s mouth twists to the side as he contemplates Prometheus. Prometheus's intense stare slides away. Still, the fighter doesn’t look nervous. Shiro keeps watching as Prometheus makes the long step from the hanging walkway to the roof of the training capsule. In his sleek black flight suit his lean muscles reflect the ambient red light in defiant streaks. 

Shiro knows what command has said about this fighter. He also knows what he’s seen so far. Shiro had gradually accepted that it wasn't a false front, not for Prometheus. Even now, knowing the errors that marred Shiro's records, Prometheus moves like someone who knows he’s delivering the fire of the gods. 

He mirrors Shiro’s previous movements, pulling up the front hatch. His poised mask slips a bit, and Shiro sees Prometheus wrinkle his nose a little. Prometheus eyes the duct-taped wiring with obvious unease. 

Shiro forces a little laugh, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “They save the repairs for the real ships,” he says. 

“Right.” Prometheus winces but drops into the ship, disappearing into the front nook. Exposed on almost every side, the Alliance knew the fighters were in a position to take the brunt of enemy fire. 

Like Janus had. 

Shiro watches him go, and only when a dark-gloved hand reaches up to drag the hatch shut does he start moving into his own compartment. Back-to-back with his fighter, nested more securely between insulation of the wings.

It’s like stepping into the skin of another life. The chair cradles Shiro, familiar and soft, even if this one has been worn to exposed padding and patches. He tugs the threadbare harness over his shoulders, clicks it into place, and reluctantly makes sure his helmet was settled. It always feels more claustrophobic with the headset tight around his ears, the material stretching over the sides of his face. He takes a deep breath, loosens his jaw. Shiro activates the mic in his helmet. “This is Atlas, checking in.”

“Prometheus, checking in.” The fighter’s voice follows his lead. 

The lights on the flight panel flared green, and the task names Atlas and Prometheus appear on a monitor at his side. Their previous scores are a stark reminder of how green a recruit Prometheus really is. It’s not the scores themselves, which are high enough but the sparse amount of them. 

“Program tango-charlie-one-oh-eight,” Shiro commands. 

“Program initiating.” 

Their previous scores disappear, replaced by visuals representing a typical flight deck. Shiro looks around, checks the lines of starfighters to assess their relative positions. When they get assigned to a starfighter, to a battleship, this will be what they’ll see before every battle. He shoves that thought out of his mind, focusing on the navigation globe that begins to glow as the simulation powers up.

They run through their pre-flight checks with a rapid efficiency. 

“We’ll keep this nice and easy,” Shiro said. “Standard flight patterns.”

Through the com he could hear Prometheus. “Sure. Feel free to shake things up a bit if you want though, I can handle whatever you want to throw at them.”

Shiro smiled at the challenge in Prometheus’s voice. “Sure about that?” he teases back. It’s comfortable. 

He can practically hear the grin in the fighter’s words: “Try me.”

Shiro grins in reply and throws the throttle open, the floor of their ‘landing bay’ on the simulator dropping out beneath them and blurring away. 

With deft gestures he sends them hurtling towards the Galra targets, taking Prometheus at his word. He doesn’t slow the speed, and a burst of fire from the other compartment lets him know that Prometheus is up for the challenge. 

On his monitor the targets explode, and he loops them around to meet the new wave of Galra. “Any motion sickness so far?” Shiro checks in. 

There’s laughter in his ear. “Gotta try harder than that.”

Shiro keeps his navigation smooth and easy for the first little while. It’s only when the pattern starts to become more chaotic that he begins to really shine. He pushes the simulator.

He knows in his bones what a proper ship can do. 

He smirks to himself when Prometheus starts setting orders - first it’s clipped requests to chase after one or another of the Galra so that they get closer. It’s an interesting change. His last fighter had been quiet, shooting whatever came into range without suggestion - or criticism. 

Shiro feels pleased with the way Prometheus takes on some of the responsibility. He respects that more. He sees why command matched them, by the time Prometheus requests a target, Shiro’s more often than not already canting their ship towards it. They think in similar ways. 

It feels seamless. It goes so well. And then..

“One o’clock -” Prometheus yells.

Shiro glances up, realizes a fraction of a second too late that it’s not a new mark his fighter is eying but a rogue ship they need to evade. It’s screaming in towards them, fast, lasers blazing. 

“Hang on,” Shiro shouts back, and throws the reverse thrusters into full power. 

It’s the moment where everything goes to hell. 

The computerized Galra enemy get close enough for a volley of shots to strike their simulated ship, rattling the pod with jarring haptic feedback. 

He grits his teeth as he draws in a new course for them with a flick of his wrist. There’s warning lights going off. The ship doesn’t like the rapid change of direction. Shiro knows what the starfighters can handle though, and reverses their thrusters again, holding his fist tight to ramp their speed up. He throws himself forward into the momentum, barely managing a yell that he hopes warns Prometheus. Shiro tracks the ship, hoping to drive it off their tail with the tactic, but the target blurs across his viewscreen as the simulator pod spins. He’s pressed heavily back against his chair, and then there’s a moment of nausea when the weight just dissipates. 

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Inside the ship. He barely registers that it’s a panel falling before the noise of the crashes locks his heart in an icy grip. 

He can’t breathe. The ship is coming apart around him—

  


* * *

  


“Atlas? Atlas!” The fog lifts. Shiro isn’t sure how much time he's lost. The past slowly relaxes its grip on him. 

“Breathe with me.” 

Prometheus. Not Janus. A simulator. Not shot in deep space. Not a violent wreck on a flight deck. “It’s just the simulation, you’re not in any danger.”

Shiro takes in a breath, but his chest has contracted tightly and he struggles to keep it from shaking. 

He sinks his head backwards and the darkness slowly uncoil from his vision. The hatch above him is open, the running lights of the station stream in, bright against the faint teal glow of the starfighter’s systems. It’s something to focus on. He’s not in the _Kerberos_ , there’s a space station around the simulator pod; it’s not just the shell of his ship between him and asphyxiation. 

Janus was never here. 

It’s Prometheus wedged overtop of Shiro. There’s little space in the starfighters to begin with, but Prometheus has somehow wedged one leg in between Shiro’s. The other is warm next to Shiro’s thigh, braced on the seat beside him, jammed into a space that’s practically non-existent.

There’s compassion in Prometheus’s expression. “That’s it, Atlas,” he says. “Are you alright?” 

Shiro remains numb for a moment. 

“Flashback,” he says, finally. It’s as much of an explanation as he wants to give. “Sorry.” Shiro turns to the side, unwilling to meet Prometheus’s worried gaze. He sees the screens, paused and flashing red. He swallows, but his mouth has gone dry. His heart is still racing, he’s in no shape to continue. 

“End simulation.” 

The computer’s voice clicks over the com system. “Simulation failed. Final score: 23 out of 100. Individual rankings have shifted. Hold for transmission of updated rank-score.”

Shiro hits the side of the simulator. 

“Hey. Look at me. That doesn’t matter.” Prometheus says carefully. Shiro watches the red lights play over his cheeks before the simulation powers itself down. 

“Sorry,” Shiro manages. 

Prometheus frowns. “They should know better than to put a real pilot in this piece of shit.” He lets the apology slide away; deflects the blame away from Shiro. 

Prometheus goes to climb out, balancing on the side and back of Shiro’s chair; using it as a ladder. There aren’t meant to be two people in these spaces, and Shiro shuts his eyes, trying to preserve some semblance of dignity. He can practically feel the heat from Prometheus’s skin-tight uniform against his face as the fighter slips out of the simulator pod, seemingly unconcerned with their proximity.

Shiro sits still for a moment after that. When he drags his heavy body free from the simulator pod, Prometheus is still standing by the hatch, reaching down to offer him a hand. 

He doesn’t deserve the sympathy that Prometheus seems willing to extend to him. 

“I liked your flight style.” Prometheus says it quietly, and when Shiro looks up, he’s looking away. It’s a peace offering. 

Shiro wants to be the person to reassure Prometheus that he’s alright, that it won’t happen again, but his mask has too many cracks in it right now. Shiro wants nothing more than to just be away from this all. Still… 

He takes Prometheus’s hand and pulls himself onto the deck. He tries to calm his racing heart. There’s only so much he can focus on. But flight itself… he struggles to hold onto that. Not his reactions. The flight.

“It would have worked in a real starfighter. Might not have been too comfortable…” he can hear the shredded quality of his own voice and suppresses the urge to flinch away. 

Prometheus hums. “I could take it.” 

Shiro wonders if he imagines a reluctance to let his hand drop away. The tone of the words still carries an offer; like they could go on like nothing had happened. Shiro is very aware that Prometheus is staying close to him as they head out over the bridge to the catwalk along the edge of the wall. He’s aware of it, but right now he wants desperately to withdraw and rebuild his self, he needs to maintain appearances. He can’t just be the broken soldier, not like this.

He should say something. He should offer to set a time to re-do the simulation at the very least. 

The look of concern Prometheus gives him doesn’t irritate Shiro like it might coming from anyone else. And that in itself…

It’s too much to deal with at the moment. He doesn’t want to brush Prometheus off — he appreciates what the fighter’s willing to do for him. But finding the words is a struggle; his mind is a mess. Shiro puts a hand on Prometheus’s shoulder as they walk down the narrow metal walkway. He squeezes as he stops near an elevator he can use to disappear for a while. He doesn’t know if it’s enough, if the touch means as much to Prometheus as it might to him, but it’s all he can offer right then. 

“I’ll see you in the mess hall later.” 

He could deal with everything later.

  


* * *

  


“You didn’t show for dinner.”

Prometheus had found him. 

“No,” Shiro says. “Wasn’t hungry.” He’s not sure if it’s the truth, but it’s easy enough to let the lie settle. 

Shiro sits against the storage boxes on the upper catwalk. The observatory windows stretch out ahead of them, the stars Shiro loved slowly spinning against the station’s motion. 

Prometheus slides to the ground beside him, saying nothing. It’s a quiet companionship. Nothing he’d seen from the fighter so far suggested that he was the type to lash out, but he hadn’t expected… this. Maybe just the calm before the storm? An apology before asking for a transfer to an unbroken navigator; someone Prometheus could trust?

It’s a lot to sit with. Shiro considers asking the fighter to just leave him to wallow alone. He’s so irritated with himself, he can’t shake off the desire to sulk. He wanted so badly to be better, and the reality is painful. Something makes him hold his tongue, though. He’s unsure what to say. The silence stretches to uncomfortable levels, even with the dull warmth of the alcohol softening the sharpest edges.

Shiro settles on a gesture instead. He passes the flask to Prometheus. He decides to just get it over with. “Will you ask for a reassignment?” 

Prometheus doesn’t answer for a long time. When he moves, it’s just to take a drink. Surprising Shiro, he finally asks, “Do you remember going to the colonies?”

Shiro looks out at the stars, confused by the non sequitur. “I helped recruit there a few years ago,” he answers cautiously. Before. “My memory hasn’t been the greatest since the accident…” he trails off, pulling his metallic prosthetic into his lap almost protectively. 

He hears Prometheus take another drink. The flask is pushed gently back into his hands. A soft nudge directing his attention back to the present. The heat that sparked to life as Prometheus’s hand met his was something else, distracting and new. The feeling rushes up his arm, leaving his chest tight. 

“My little backwater town…” Prometheus says with a bitter laugh. “Everyone was so excited. It was the biggest event ever. The Alliance came in with their fancy white uniforms. They all looked like royalty, something out of the movies. They brought the simulators, the shooting contests…”

Slowly, Shiro’s attention shifted from the sanctuary of the stars ahead. Prometheus was looking down, thumb running over his first knuckle, gaze miles away but trained on the floor of the catwalk. It was probably the most Shiro had heard Prometheus say at one time, and he was still talking. Shiro tries to think back, tries to remember that day, while Prometheus continues. 

“I hung around the edges of the crowd. Opportunities like that… they weren’t for kids like me. I was worthless, just another piece of colonist trash. But you saw me watching and pulled me in anyway, set me up in the simulator pod.”

Prometheus takes in a deep breath and lets his head fall back, hitting the storage box behind them lightly. Shiro swings his gaze away, not wanting to be caught staring. It’s too intimate. Prometheus’s arm is steady against his, warm and anchoring as he shifts to stay closer to Shiro. The touch draws his attention, and he wants to melt into it. His resolve softened by the alcohol, and he lets himself indulge. He doesn’t move away. 

Shiro thinks he remembers. “You blew everyone's scores out of the water,” Shiro says softly, the words catching in his throat. 

“Yeah,” Prometheus says, and drank. “That scared me enough that I ran,” he admits. 

“You stole the rover.”

Prometheus laughs darkly. “Yeah. Suddenly having something like the Alliance be a possibility, well, I had no one to recommend me. I was already orphaned by then, wasn’t part of any gangs. I’d dropped out of school. On Mars—” he gestures, trying to show the entirety of the situation “—-if you do a tour of duty, and if you come back, you don’t have to worry about credits. Y’know?” He swallows. “You avoid the mines. Avoid the factories. Everyone fights so hard for each place. And you… you just made sure I had a place in Basic training with just a few words, Atlas. You could have left me in jail but you didn’t…”

Prometheus’s eyes are shimmering, and the impulse to press a kiss into his forehead is nearly overpowering. Shiro's heart aches for someone who felt he had nothing. 

There’s a sigh, and Prometheus’s head drops to rest on Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro’s pretty sure his heart stops beating. He freezes, scared that he might somehow ruin this.

“You were everything. You are everything. It had been so long since I wanted something as badly as I wanted to be like you. Mars and Earth. Fighter and Navigator. I wanted to be part of it so bad.” His voice drops into a whisper. 

The words are hard to believe. Shiro tentatively moves, cautiously extends his arm to hook around Prometheus and pull the fighter in closer against his side. He knows that he’s going beyond a friendly comfort. 

“You deserve so much more than me as a partner,” he says softly, lips moving against Prometheus’s dark hair. 

Prometheus laughs and folds his arms across his chest. “Don’t say that. My life would have been so different without you. I don’t think I’ll ever live up to the standards you set.”

Shiro thinks about the way that Prometheus easily claims control when he needs to, the way that he hides his care for others. No, Shiro thinks fondly. You’re going to take whatever I’ve done and surpass it. He looks down at the flask, unwilling to voice his inner thoughts. “That was a long time ago.”

“Not so long.” Prometheus is determined. 

Shiro’s eyebrows pinch together and he tries again. His own weakness been flayed from his skin by circumstances out of his control, but Prometheus’s had been calculated, an olive branch of shared vulnerability. “We’re… very different people now, from who we were then. I’d understand if you want someone you can trust to fly with…” Someone who wasn’t broken. 

Prometheus’s hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes firmly. 

“The only way I’m taking a reassignment is if you request one,” Prometheus says, eyes vivid and determined when Shiro dares to meet them. “I want to fly with the best in the fleet, and that’s what I have.” A smile curves his lips. Not by much, but it’s there. “I also have physical training first shift, so I need to head back.” He hesitates. “You coming?”

Shiro can’t help but share a soft smile in response. It’s automatic, and he doesn’t think he could stop it if he tries. Shiro searches the fighter’s face, trying to parse the reasoning behind the offer. His initial thought is to say he wants some time alone to gather his thoughts. But he’s spent time alone. Maybe it was time for him to stop running, too. 

“Yeah.”

He thinks that when Prometheus glances back at him he can feel something shifting between them. The air feels thick with promise. But he’s not sure, and he lets Prometheus take the lead. 

When they get back to their room, he sees a tray from the cafeteria on his side of the dresser. Shiro is touched at the kindness. “Thanks,” he says, appreciating the gesture. 

Prometheus looks away, but a smile curves the corner of his lips. He heads to the bathroom, and Shiro can hear him brush his teeth. There’s a quiet reassurance in the little sounds of now-familiar routine. 

He knows that sleep won't come easy to him. He pulls his tablet out of the drawer, and forces himself to send a quick request to his therapist before he can talk himself out of it. Idly, he thumbs through the files he has there and picks out a movie. Anything to get him out of his own head. 

There’s a thump as Prometheus’s casual jacket gets tossed over the fighter’s bed. Shiro resolutely looks back at his tablet to give Prometheus the privacy to change. His spinning thoughts circle back to Prometheus’s earlier words, and he feels that same rush of warmth in his chest. He technically outranks Prometheus, although he’d given up his title for the chance to fly. The Alliance looked down on fighter-navigator relations. There were another handful of reasons for him to try to ignore these feelings, but the rules felt so brittle under the weight of the emotions. 

“’Night, Atlas.”

Shiro looks over, and Prometheus’s gaze feels sticky, it catches his own. For a moment, just a moment, he lets himself wonder. If he stood up, if he walked over there, would Prometheus accept something more? 

Shiro swallows. It’s tempting. He could imagine the feel of Prometheus’s lithe body pulled tight against his. But it’s so much more than a physical draw. He wants Prometheus to know that, too. His tongue can’t form the words though, doesn’t know how to put his appreciation into words.

He’s spent so long fighting for everything himself, feeling like he’s against an unfair world. The way that Prometheus throws himself into that defense is touching. It means so much to him.

He can feel his expression soften, and the smile he gives Prometheus is soft; genuine. He gives up the struggle for words. They have time, after all. He doesn’t need to say everything tonight. 

“Goodnight, Prometheus.”

  


* * *

  



	3. Chapter 3

Atlas looks bright-eyed and younger between his friends.

That alone is enough to make Keith smile. He’d been too used to just having people that drift by; it’d been a long time since he considered anyone else a friend. Atlas had slowly grown into that label though. He’s glad that Atlas had insisted he join them, although he would never admit it. The small group had claimed a corner of the flight deck, dragging some empty cargo containers around to mimic a table and chairs. 

He catches the youngest cadet looking at him contemplatively and immediately bites down on his smile. Twisting his eyes from Atlas, Keith peels the corners of his cards off the table to see his hand. 

Atlas had pulled him into the group with an easy arm around his shoulder when he felt like an awkward intruder. “This is my fighter, Prometheus,” Atlas had introduced Keith. He nods to the others. “These are Lance, Hunk, and Pidge.” Lance and Hunk wore the gray coveralls of crewmen, and Pidge was in the pale white and orange of a navigator cadet. Apparently Lance and Hunk were there on a layover, and had brought contraband with them. 

Keith now knew that Atlas had a sweet tooth, that none of them smoked, and that Atlas refused to bet with alcohol while Pidge was part of the game. Keith’s usual currency of bribery on the station was useless. Atlas had pressed a few plastic chips into his hand and told him not to worry about it.

Lance tosses in a few chips for the small blind. 

“Ante up, mullet.” 

Keith meets Lance’s smirk with a determined glare and drops in a few of Atlas’s bright colored chips. 

“You’re in a good mood,” Shiro comments to Lance, eyes on his cards and face unreadable. 

“Yeah. We got a new assignment. We’re heading out on a re-supply run to the _Castle_ tomorrow.”

“What’s so good about that?” Keith asks. 

Both Pidge and Hunk groan. 

Lance lounges and gives Keith a look that Keith struggles to interpret. “Have you seen Commander Allura? Because damn—”

“Lance…” Atlas warns. The edge in Atlas’s voice is enough to make Keith wary, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect on Lance. 

“You think she asked for me specifically?” Lance muses, sprawling back in his chair. “I bet she did. Can Commanders do that? Do you think she knows my name or just this?” He circles an open hand around his face. 

Atlas sighs. 

Pidge leans back as well, not too subtly trying to catch sight of Lance’s hand. 

“If they’ll even need those supplies by the time you get there. There’s a chance there’ll be a ceasefire soon.” Pidge adjusts her glasses. “Not that you heard it from me,” she says. She looks at the cards on the table. “I’m in.”

Atlas nods, as if it doesn’t surprise him. “Is that what they’re saying at Central command?” 

Pidge shakes her head. “They’re not saying much while they negotiate.”

“And you probably didn’t hear that from your dad…” Hunk eyes her suspiciously. 

Pidge’s grin turns sly. “I may have built a new scanner…”

“What?!” Hunk waves his free hand. “And this is the first I hear of it?” He pokes a finger at her side. Pidge elbowed back at him viciously. “I can’t believe you’re going to get court martialed without me.”

“It’s still in testing!” she yelps. “And you better not say anything about it until I manage to get the official approval…”

“Atlas gets all the news. You play favorites.” Hunk feigns a grumpy look for a moment but he doesn’t hold the pout. “I fold,” he says. 

“I didn’t think the Galra were big on negotiations.” Keith looks to Pidge, then to Atlas. The Galra’d just wanted the energy, the quintessence, harbored in the Earth and Martian colonies. It was why they were all fighting so desperately. “Did our blockade change their mind?” It seems unlikely. 

Pidge studies Keith. He gets the sense that she is measuring him up. He doesn’t flinch. “They’re not negotiating with the Emperor. Not the old one, anyway.” She glances back over at Atlas. “Seems like the Emperor has a son with different views on the whole drain-all-the-planets-dry thing.” She bobs her eyebrows. “He’s got some support from rebel fractions.”

Hunk sighs. “Sounds like wishful thinking.”

Pidge looks offended. “I know what I heard.”

Atlas thins his lips. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there are other factions. We barely have an idea of how large the Galra Empire is. It’d be good to have allies.”

Pidge’s wrist starts making a buzzing noise and she curses. “It’s Dad. Gotta go.” She shoves one of Hunk’s cookies into her mouth as she stands up, holding up her cards. “Atlas? You in?”

Atlas nods, and reveals his hand.

Pidge flips over her cards, and gestures impatiently for Lance and Keith to do the same. 

“YES!” She pumps the air, spilling crumbs, and steals the pot from the table, sweeping it into a hidden pocket at her side. She quickly hugged Lance and Hunk. “Good to see you both!” Her wrist keeps buzzing, and she swipes at it in chaotic hurry. “You heard nothing from me,” she reminds them all, pointing at her own eyes and then sweeping her hand around the group. The serious glint dissolved quickly though. “Let me know when you’re in again! I’ve got my eye on some other upgrades for Rover.” She pats her pocket. 

The cards sort of lose their luster after Pidge rushes out. They talk a bit about people Keith doesn’t know, about the rumors from the war front. Since the words don't hold his attention, Keith lets himself watch Atlas. 

  


* * *

  


“We’re heading out early. We should get some rest.” Hunk shepherds a reluctant Lance to his feet. 

“Come back safe,” Atlas says, embracing each of them in turn. 

Lance salutes Keith mockingly as he steps backwards. “’Course. You’re talking to the best damn pilot out here,” he says with a wide grin. 

Keith is surprised when Hunk hugs him after Atlas. “Let me know your favourite flavor. I’ll bake something for you too next time.” Hunk’s dark eyes flick over to Atlas. “Take care of him out there, Prometheus.”

“I will,” Keith promises. He steps back beside Atlas.

  


* * *

  


Keith’s always been a light sleeper. He’d been grateful for that in the past, able to wake and be on his feet before anyone could mess with him in the orphanage, or out on his own in the colony, or even in the fighter’s barracks where the overseers had turned a blind eye to all sorts of things. 

But at this moment it makes him feel like an intruder. It’s been long enough that he knows Atlas wouldn’t want any witnesses to this. Keith can see him struggling on the other bed, battling with some sort of nightmares. He’s obviously distressed, and Keith doesn’t know how he can help. 

“Hey,” he stage-whispers. Maybe Atlas is also a light sleeper. 

But the little pained noises don’t stop. 

Concerned, Keith rolls out of his own bed. “You alright?” he asks, a little louder, as he steps toward the other bed. 

Atlas must be deep in a nightmare. Even in the dim light Keith can see the sheen of sweat, the way Atlas’s neck is tensed and rigid. 

He doesn’t want to wake him…. But still…. Keith reaches out cautiously. For all that he had been told that navigators were timid and fragile, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Atlas could crush him if he wanted too. He settles his hand lightly on Atlas’s shoulder. 

Atlas’s eyes snap open and he sucks in a deep breath. 

“You were dreaming,” Keith murmurs. Atlas brings his left hand up to rub at his eyes. He glances around the room. 

“Did I wake you?” Atlas’s eyes are still a little too wide, although his tone is immediately soft, apologetic. 

Keith doesn’t hesitate. “I was awake.” He can’t help the way his eyes slide to the side. 

“Sorry.” From the grimace he makes, Atlas probably sees right through the lie. 

Keith would pull his teeth out before he would intrude and ask, but he wonders what Atlas was dreaming about. “Hang on.” He squeezes Atlas’s shoulder as he makes his way past the bed.

In the bathroom, Keith fills a cup with tap water. When he returns to the bunk, Atlas is sitting up. Keith hands him the glass. 

There’s a code here though. Keith always struggled with the ‘unwritten rules’ but staying out of things that don’t concern him is one that comes naturally. Or at least, it used to. Against his better judgment he lingers close. Hovering. Protective.

“Can I get you anything else?” 

Atlas gives a lopsided smile. “Let me know if you can erase some memories.”

Keith gives him a skeptical look. 

Atlas shifts a bit and turns away. “I’ll just throw on a movie. If that won’t keep you up.” 

Keith studies him. “It’s fine.” He likely won’t get back to sleep for a while either. “Want some company?” 

“You don’t need to,” Atlas downs the water. “You can sleep.” He pulls his tablet up. 

Keith impulsively sits down beside him, looking at the screen. 

“Abel recommended this one,” Atlas says softly, shifting over to give Keith some space on the narrow bed. “And Ethos had a copy.” Atlas’s prosthetic finger taps on the file. “It’s supposed to be good, if you like this sort of thing…” He balances the tablet on his thigh.

Atlas is studying Keith’s face. Keith can feel it. 

Keith hesitates. “I don’t watch many movies.”

Atlas gives a small smile. “It’s kind of obscure,” he says, and in the quiet it just seems natural to lean in closer to hear him. “And the start of a series…”

Keith only half-listens to Atlas murmuring about the history of it. He’s happy that it seems like Atlas has been distracted from earlier. His eyes are stuck on the screen. Atlas is so close he can feel the man’s voice. Lately, Atlas has been more open with him, there’s a casual acceptance and giving of touch that’s grown to feel like it could be something more. 

Keith sighs and pulls his legs onto the bed, feeling incredibly aware of Atlas beside him. There’s no way to do this without touching. Neither of them suggest moving to the floor, though. It’s more comfortable than it should be. Atlas feels solid and warm against his side. The movie is alright, but it dulls in comparison to the man next to him. 

They start out leaning against the wall. At some point they get the pillow from Keith’s bed. Gaps start to appear in the movie, jumps between characters and settings as Keith fades in and out of dreams. Atlas doesn’t point it out though. Keith’s pretty sure his head has fallen to Atlas’s shoulder more than once, and eventually, he stops trying to shift back to the pillow. As Keith’s eyes drift shut Atlas shifts lower on the bed, stretching out, props the tablet against the dresser and continues to watch the movie over Keith’s shoulder.

At some point end credits appear and he reluctantly thinks he should move, but Atlas’s arm reaches over him to select the next one. His hand settles on his hip, casual. If it’s reality, it’s hazy. Atlas fits so nicely behind him, and it feels safe here. For him. He hopes that Atlas feels the same way. He’s sure his dreams are tangling with the movie, with Atlas so near, but Atlas’s thumb stroking absent patterns into his side just feels so right.

  


* * *

  


Keith wakes in the bed with his own blanket tucked over him and the memories of Atlas still lingering. The room’s quiet, tablet hidden away, and he hopes that Atlas found sleep as well, at some point. He stretches, and thinks, and when his alarm finally goes off, he’s still reluctant to leave.

  


* * *

  


Another late night in a string of them. It's becoming so common that it's almost normal. Shiro knows he should have been trying to sleep hours ago. He can tell himself that he can’t put down the novel he’s reading but it’s a superficial excuse. He tried to tire himself out, but all he has in an exhausted body and racing mind. He’s sure that if he falls asleep the nightmares will be waiting. And the empty bed on the other side of the room gives him an excuse to stay up. 

He feels hyper-aware of each little sound on the ship. When he finally hears it, the slight buzz of the door mechanism makes him smile in anticipation. 

The door hisses open. Prometheus staggers in. His arm is curled protectively around his midsection, although he drops it when he sees Shiro still awake. 

“Fuck. What happened?” Shiro asks, eyes narrowing in concern as he sets aside his tablet. 

Prometheus tilts his chin up defiantly. There’s a swelling red mark along one cheekbone and a smear of dark blood underneath his nose, but he looks proud despite it. “Nothing.”

“Are you okay?” Shiro gets up.

“I’m fine,” Prometheus says shortly, and shoulders his way past Shiro, disappearing into the bathroom.

Surprise freezes Shiro for a moment. The sound of running water breaks the brief paralysis. Shiro follows, and leans against the doorway of the bathroom. Prometheus has his face thrust under the sink, running his hand over his mouth. The movement of his hands draws Shiro’s eyes; his knuckles are also bloodied, the skin split.

Prometheus raises his head and stares at Shiro in the mirror. His lips slide into a small smile. “Really.” His tone has gone soft. “Don’t worry about it. This is nothing.” That doesn’t reassure Shiro. Prometheus straightens and gives a small grimace as he strips out of his gray jacket. It makes Shiro certain that there are other injuries the fighter is trying to hide.

Shiro’s wince is sympathetic. “You should go to the medbay.” 

Prometheus makes a wry noise. “The only thing that’d get me is sent to the brig.”

He pierces Prometheus with a disapproving look, and moved to one of the bathroom drawers. “Let me help, then.” 

“I’ve got this,” Prometheus protests warily, as Shiro digs out a roll of bandages from the basic medical kit. 

There’s a slight slur to the words though. Shiro moves even closer. The fighter lets himself be cornered against the sink, leaning a hip into the counter in what Shiro can read as an attempt to look casual. He’s tense, but doesn’t look like he’s about to bolt. 

“What happened?” Shiro repeats himself. He knows Prometheus now. He knows Prometheus isn’t one to go picking indiscriminate fights. 

Prometheus’s gaze doesn’t leave him, but the fighter only thins his lips. It’s obvious that this wasn’t a part of training exercises. Not at this hour. Not with those types of wounds. Not with the threat of the brig. “Nothing,” Prometheus finally repeats his non-answer. 

Shiro reaches out to lightly touch Prometheus’s sharp chin, guiding his head into a tilt. Prometheus doesn’t resist. This close, he can see the way Prometheus’s nostrils flare, can feel the way he tenses under Shiro’s gentle fingertips. At least Prometheus’s nose doesn’t look broken. 

Time stands still for a moment and Shiro’s original intent falters. The realization that Prometheus had accepted the near-caress sends icy sparks down Shiro’s spine. They’re so close —and Prometheus hasn’t pulled away. He looks back at Shiro with a challenge in his determined stare. Shiro holds his breath, struck by the murky violet of Prometheus’s irises. He watches the unusual color thin as Prometheus’s pupils grow larger in his shadow. His own ribs feel like they’re constricting around his heart. 

Shiro can smell the sweat of the fight and the faint coppery hint of blood. He forces his hand to drop rather than pull the fighter closer. His heart races and his face feels too hot. “Go shower.” Shiro’s voice has gone rough. He retreats into a commander’s mindset, hiding his inappropriate thoughts behind a steady mask. He picks up the medical tape. “I’ll help you with this. After.”

“You don’t have to.” Prometheus turns his face away, breathing more rapid than usual. 

“Please, let me.” 

Shiro waits, and finally gets a reluctant nod from Prometheus. Shiro leaves the bathroom with the tape as his hostage before he can talk himself into trying to stay. 

He sits on his bed with his head in his hands, listening to the painfully quiet movements in the room beyond. Prometheus is too stoic to grunt or whimper with his pain, but the time seems to drag on before Shiro hears the shower finally start. 

He makes a brief attempt to go back to his book but his mind is elsewhere. His eyes follow the words on the page, but in his mind he’s thinking of Prometheus. 

The shower stops. Shiro’s attention is pulled to the door.

Eventually, Prometheus steps through with only a towel tied around his waist. In the low light Shiro can make out the shadow of new bruises on his torso. There’s an answering ache under his own ribs, and he wishes there was something he could do. He knows how this works, though. If he says anything, well, someone higher ranking stepping in would make everything worse.

Prometheus smiles when Shiro’s gaze drags back up and Shiro knows what it looks like. Shiro swallows, and tells himself he’s better than that. Shiro sets his tablet aside again and sits up, gesturing Prometheus closer. He deals with the embarrassment by pretending it was nothing. 

Prometheus doesn’t resist when Shiro pulls him over to the bed, close to the bedside lamp. 

Shiro wasn’t a stranger to fights, but over the years the ones around him had become... sanitized. A few well placed words or accusations were often all his colleagues would need to bring a former friend down. 

Shiro takes the med-tape and starts to wrap Prometheus’s knuckles. Below the wounds his hands are strong, unshaking in Shiro’s gentle touch. 

“Still determined to keep the reason for the fight a secret?” he asks, as he finishes with one hand.

“Just an asshole. He’s not worth thinking about.” Prometheus says softly. 

Shiro looks up, wanting to press on but the dark depths of Prometheus’s eyes steal his words away. So he nods, and lets his fighter keep his secrets.

  


* * *

  


A battleship, the _Sleipnir_ , docks and for a few days their routines are thrown into chaos. The battleship had asked for volunteers; a mission to deep space, a thrust into Galra territory to destroy a shipyard too close to their own solar system. 

Their attempts in the simulator had been getting better and better; the names Atlas and Prometheus consistently placed high in the rankings. Despite their improving scores, the _Sleipnir_ only needs a handful of replacement teams, and Commander Cook turns down Shiro’s request to join in favor of more established pairs. The _Sleipnir_ glides off, leaving the space station a little bit more empty. 

New starfighters are assembled to replace those that have left. The deck slowly repopulates with the small attack ships. New names are stenciled into the sides. And one morning they get the notification that they’re being assigned to one of them. 

The _Defender._

____

Something in the name just clicks into place for Shiro. The emotions that had compelled him to enlist started to trickle through the dam he’d built around them. Cautiously, he lets himself feel again. Pride. Hope. The feelings begin like strangers inside his skin, but the sense of promise also taken root. He can grow into them again. 

It helps that Prometheus is at his side, a source steady support and unwavering confidence. 

He looked out at the starscape beyond. He could imagine the blue afterburn of the _Sleipnir’s_ eight engines jets, although it’s long gone. He wants to be out there too, not waiting on a space station. He’d had time enough here. 

And he trusted Prometheus with his life. 

They were going to do this. 

The _Titan_ is the next battleship that docks. Shiro readies himself with a breath, and steps into Commander Holt’s office. He’s going to fight for this placement. _Their_ placement. They’re ready.

  


* * *

  


He wants to head back to his room. Actually, he’d rather be heading anywhere but the commander’s office, even to another round of PT despite the raw ache in his muscles from the morning’s session. But no matter how much Keith wanted to drag his feet, this summons wasn’t one he could ignore. 

The sense of impending doom is amplified by the guards that become more and more common the further into mission control he travels.. They all wear dark visors pulled low under their helmets, obscuring their faces. Each carried a large gun, something denied to the common fighters. He wonders just how safe the space station was if the commanders felt like they needed armed guards around. There’s a sense of calm order in the guards, something that sets them apart from the fighters. The fighters always had a sense of barely contained aggression. Although Keith doesn’t doubt the guards are quite capable of violence. 

He steps between two guards to cross the doorway and stands rigidly at attention just inside the threshold. “Sir. Prometheus reporting. As requested.” 

“At ease, Prometheus,” Commander Bering gives an easy wave of his cigar. “I’ll just be a moment.” He’s lounging; utterly unconcerned about the presence of the fighter. Keith shifts stiffly into an at ease posture, but doesn’t relax in the slightest. 

Commander Bering continues looking down at his tablet, not acknowledging Keith any further. The minutes stretch on. 

He finishes what he’s reading and looks up. He runs his hand through his beard and contemplates Keith. “Sit,” he gestures to an armchair near him. 

Keith obeys. His eyes don’t leave the Commander. 

Bering leans forward. “I always like to review the records of the fighters I’m sending out.” His hand moves absently, drawing loose patterns in the air with the cigar. “Would you believe what I found in yours, son?”

Keith’s heart stopped. This was it. He was going to be kicked out. He forces his face to remain blank. “Sir.” 

“Quite the track record you have back in the colonies,” Bering still keeps a friendly appearance but the fatherly air covers something far more lethal. “It’d be a shame to have to send you back to jail.”

Keith isn’t sure what to say. 

“Still, your track record here makes me reconsider my first instincts. You’d like to stay on, I presume?”

More than anything. Keith has long known not to let others know what he wants though. It’s leverage, though, leverage that he doesn’t want Bering to have over him. So he keeps his expression unchanging and nods once, trying to tell himself it doesn’t matter. 

“Good to hear, son. Get up.” Bering stands. Keith moves to mimic him, but Commander Bering freezes him with a glance and walks in a slow circle around him. Keith’s skin crawls. It feels like ages before Bering is looking at his face again, studying it. His eyes are dark, inscrutable. 

The scent of stale smoke chokes out the air of the room. Every instinct screams inside Keith, wanting him to lash out. He freezes instead, not wanting to jeopardize his position here. He feels like livestock. He’s almost sick to his stomach. Old rumors flare back to life inside his head. He’d dismissed them as ugly, improbably, something to scare new recruits with. Now he wasn’t so sure. 

“What would you do to stay here, Prometheus?” Commander Bering asks, his voice low. 

Keith wants to yell, wants to jerk around and implore the guards at the door to do something. This can’t be normal. 

But neither of the guards react. It's as if they expect this, or have seen it before. 

He steels himself. Getting sent back to the colonies isn’t an option. Jail isn’t an option. He’s worked too hard to get here. His stomach drops, and he feels more nauseous and disoriented than he had during his first flight. Ideals are too costly to have out here. 

“Whatever it takes,” Keith says dully. He can’t bring himself to give the words much volume. 

Commander Bering’s smile spreads slowly across his face. “Just what I like to hear.”

Keith’s heart is crashing in his ears. His eyes slip over to the guards, who are standing, as still as statues. Neither of them react. 

Bering turns to the screens though, and of all things, pulls up Atlas’s file. 

Keith stares, uncomprehending. 

Bering slaps a hand across Keith’s shoulder and Keith feels every muscle tense. He instincts are screaming at him to draw his knife. He flexes his empty fingers.

“You must have some sense of how… special your navigator is, Prometheus.” Bering looks down at his tablet, the one he hasn’t shown to Keith. “You’re certainly willing to fight for him already. Interesting that medical only reported Tethys’s injuries after the fight a few weeks ago.” Keith’s eyebrows draw together and he knows his expression is getting stormy. He’s never been good at hiding his reactions. He looks away, fighting the urge to lash out verbally. Damn Tethys for squealing. 

Bering’s dark eyes held something like mirth. “Don’t worry, son.” This time, Keith did flinch away from the endearment. “I can keep you out of the brig.”

Keith grits his teeth. 

“We’re adding some special modifications to the _Defender._ ”

That… wasn’t the direction he thought this would go in. Keith narrows his eyes. “Atlas already mentioned that,” Keith wants to cut this as short as possible. It’s not like he needs to be threatened to trust Altas to fly something with a new modification.

Bering focuses on him, shark-like and hungry. As if Keith had finally said something interesting. “Did he now?”

“His… friends in the lab with the… programs…” Keith tries to remember what Atlas had called them, but can’t remember the details. He’s so uncomfortable here, and it clouds his thoughts. He takes in a breath, thinks of the feel of the ship gliding below him, thinks of racing over starfields and planetscapes. Thinks of Atlas beside him. He rubs a thumb over his fisted knuckles and tries to unlock his jaw.

Bering nods. “This one is still in the testing phase. Atlas may be able to activate some of the more experimental components.”

His arm, Keith realizes. “What do you need me for?”

“Call it inspiration, son.” Bering grins and sits back. “It’ll be an easy task. We’ve got a bit of tech reverse engineered from a Galra crash.” Bering uses a slender knife, slices the end off a new cigar. “We need an edge in this war. The Galra can use worm-holes in ways we could only imagine - until now.”

Keith still doesn’t follow. “And I…”

“The only time its has been successfully operated by humans was with a pair of lovers. Emotional energy.” He waves his hand, dismissive of the thought. Bering cups a hand around the edge of his cigar, shielding his lighter from non-existent winds. He looks up at Keith, and seems disappointed that Keith is sitting there stunned. “Seduce him. Make him fall in love with you.” Bering shrugs, like that’s nothing, and pulls a breath in to light the cigar. 

Keith recoils. Not Shiro’s arm, then. His heart. Keith feels his neck grow hot. He’s frozen to the spot, and even if he gave in to his impulse to bolt, where would he go? How easy would it be for the guards to have an accident —no one but Atlas would wonder about his disappearance. No one was waiting for him on Mars. And Bering knew that. 

“I can’t…” he finally chokes out. 

“It shouldn’t be too hard. We’ve got a pretty good psych profile on Atlas. He should be amenable. And with your record…” Bering trails off to tap his cigar into a heavy glass ashtray. “Of course, if you won’t, well, then I might have to answer Tethys’s complaint by throwing you in the brig as well. There’s a transport heading back to Mars in a week. I’m sure they could find room for you in one of the prison workcamps. Not many options for a colonist after a dishonorable discharge.” 

Keith shakes his head, wide eyed in disbelief. You can’t be asking me to do this. No one would believe this. 

He needs to get out of there. He can’t agree to emotionally manipulate Atlas. The horror of it scratches at his spine, drawing cold claws along clammy skin. 

“The _Defender_ will be modified before your transfer to the _Titan_. You’ll be reporting directly to me. No one else hears about this.” Bering flicks his lighter, and looks up at his guards, significance heavy in the glance. “You have your orders.”

He thinks of his father’s belongings, locked in storage back on Mars. At the start of this mission it had seemed so simple. Get the paycheck. Ransom his things out of the clutches of the pawn shop that had stolen them during his last brief stint in jail. He just needs to get this paycheck and get back. He’d felt so close to finding out something about his mother…

He thinks of the way that Atlas has begun to look at him. He thinks of the trust that’s grown and feels sick. He wants so much, but he doesn’t want to seduce him under orders. He wonders about taking his chances with death and a refusal. But what if it’s the _Defender_ that’s tampered with and not a guard 'accidentally' taking him out? Erasing them both under the cover of a battle... He can’t risk Atlas getting caught up in this too. 

He wants to protest, wants to point out that Atlas would likely help out, that the research labs could find partners already linked in that way, despite the regulations against that sort of… fraternization. There had to be another way.

Keith realizes he’s been silent for too long. He’s no good at lying. But he’ll just have to pretend long enough to get out of Bering’s direct command. He can’t trust his voice to promise anything.

So Keith nods. 

When he leaves, there’s a moment where the guards don’t move and he’s scared Bering has seen through his veneer of obedience. 

But they let him through, and soon he’s alone in the hallway. He wants to put the horror behind him, but the expectations loom, threatening and dark.

  


* * *


	4. Chapter 4

The battleship is tiny. Keith halts as soon as he sees the empty room. It’s barely wider than the door itself. Keith looks back at Atlas. 

Atlas shrugs and steps forward, moving them into the narrow space. 

The one bed is barely wider than Atlas’s shoulders. Keith’s eyebrows knit together. Would they sleep in shifts? That didn’t really make sense. They had to be on the same training schedule, didn’t they?

For a moment Keith just looks at the single bed, trying to picture a way that sharing could even work. It’s unfortunately too easy to picture himself curled over Atlas, legs entangled. The tips of his ears burn with embarrassed heat and he’s suddenly very aware that it doesn’t strike him as a terrible idea. Still… his last conversation with Bering rests heavy on Keith’s shoulders and he wonders if this is a horrible set-up. Then, he then sees the way Atlas is struggling to keep from smiling. Keith gives him a look. He can’t see anything to joke about. Atlas _can’t_ tease him about this. 

Atlas reaches up to press a slight recess. A second, higher bunk slides out of the wall at chest level. The supports clicks easily into place, a small ladder extending down the foot of the bed. “The mattresses are usually stored in the closet.” Atlas gestures behind him. 

Keith wants to say that he feels relief, but disappointment weighs him down instead. “Right…” Keith forces himself to breathe. Atlas has been on these types of ships before. Could he do it? Could he try to seduce someone like Atlas? He feels frozen to the floor. He doesn’t think his mind has ever felt so blank. 

“So… top or bottom?” Atlas asks. There's a sly look in his eyes. 

And Keith can’t do this right now. He shoves Atlas instead. Something rough-and-tumble. Familiar. Contact, but it destroys the building atmosphere. “Do you have to ask it like that?” It’s an empty threat. But there’s panic waiting behind his words. Damn Bering and his request. 

Atlas laughs. “It’s a requirement.”

Atlas sets his duffel bag down on the dresser. Keith robotically copies him and they start to unpack. 

It’s a few moments before the silence is broken, and by then the teasing has left Atlas’s voice. 

“You’ve been quiet,” Atlas observes.

Keith startles a bit, unused to someone knowing him well enough to interpret anything from his silences. “Oh.” He looks over in shock at Atlas, but can’t hold his gaze. He looks down, and keeps his hands busy. It’s suddenly incredibly important that he sets all his socks in the drawer just-so. “Yeah. I had a really weird meeting.”

“What happened?” Atlas asks. This dresser isn’t divided. They end up throwing similar things in together rather than choosing their own drawers. 

Keith feels his ears heat up at the memory. This choice could destroy him but the alternative was impossible. Lying isn’t something that’s in his nature. “I think a Commander just asked me to seduce you.” 

Atlas laughs. He sways into Keith’s body, nudging him lightly with a shoulder. 

“I’m serious. It was… really strange.”

Atlas hesitates in his packing. “You’re serious?” he asks flatly. 

Keith crinkles his nose and nods. 

“Not just a ‘you should get along with your navigator’ type thing?”

A frantic energy creeps into the way he shakes his head. “Not just that. They want… more. It’s part of a project where they want lovers as flight partners.” He feels like his memories are blurring though. Maybe he had exaggerated it. It was bizarre. 

“Why…?”

Keith looks over to Atlas. “I don’t know. It’s classified.” 

“What did you say?” Shiro asks. If Keith read him right, something like curiosity burned behind his gaze. 

Keith swallows. He hadn’t expected to be taken seriously. The whole suggestion had made his skin crawl. The thought that some of the things he’d heard about being ordered was sickening. 

He forced a smile, feeling self-conscious. “That I wouldn’t be able too.”

Atlas makes an strange, considering noise. “And he let you go after asking something like that?” 

Keith shook his head. “He threatened me with a dishonorable discharge and getting thrown back in civilian jail.”

Atlas’s frown grows. “If that’s true maybe you shouldn’t talk about it at all here.” He scans the room, and Keith lifts his eyes as well, scanning, but finding nothing, no visible cameras. 

Not that that meant anything. 

  


* * *

  
It sticks in his head, how sure Commander Bering had been of himself. The stories from the other fighters. How weak the navigators were, how they just wanted to be taken, controlled. All the boasts in the locker room. He wonders about it. He should be asleep, staring up at the underside of the bunk above him, but he wonders. He rolls over and stares at the blank wall in front of him. 

He squeezes his eyes shut. He tells himself that he doesn’t know Atlas, not really. He sets his jaw and rolls onto his back. He can’t get comfortable. Not in his head, not on the bunk. He listens. Atlas’s breathing is soft; steady. He can’t tell if his navigator is awake.

“Hey Atlas?” he asks, voice small in the quiet room. 

“Yeah?” Atlas’s voice is soft but clear. Keith guessed he hadn’t been sleeping either. 

“Did you sleep with your last fighter?” he asks, before he can stop himself. He thinks he manages to keep the contemplative jealousy from leaking into the words. 

The room cools at the question. It’s a long moment before he hears Atlas sigh. “No. I didn’t know Janus that well at all.”

“Janus was your fighter?”

“Yes. My first fighter. He was assigned to the _Kerberos_ with me.” Atlas taps on the wall absently. “When we flew to Pluto, to check out if those energy readings were a Galra wormhole.”

Keith’s history is weak, but even he knows a few of the more famous battles. His gut sinks. “The diversion when the Galra attacked Mars?”

“Yes.”

He hears Atlas shift. 

“If you’re asking about lovers, though I’d had a… partner before that. Adam. He was in line for a command position, like me. We were posted to the same station. He’d wanted me to stay with him. I still wanted to travel further out; he thought we should stay where it was safer. I knew I could do more as a pilot. He made it an ultimatum. So we broke up. And I left central command to become a navigator.” 

In the silence, Keith twists the thin blanket between his fingers. 

“Later I learned Adam died in the first attack wave.” Guilt clouded Atlas’s voice. “My starfighter wing made it back near the end of the battle. That’s when the _Kerberos_ was shot. I was lucky to hang on long enough to crash into the hanger bay.”

Lucky. Lucky to just lose an arm. Lucky, to be able to head out into battle again. 

There’s a soft laugh from above him. “That got bleak. How about you? What was your last relationship like?”

Keith tenses and wonders if he can fake being asleep. 

It takes him a moment to dig up the courage to say anything, and even then he keeps his words curt. “Nothing to tell.” He jams his hand under his pillow and rolls to his side, pressing his back against the wall. 

The only reply is a quiet, contemplative ‘hmm’ from Atlas.  
  


* * *

  
Atlas looks up as Keith enters the room. He briefly meets his eyes, then turns back to his tablet. Keith can see the red recording light on so he hangs back, out of sight by the door. 

“It’s probably nothing, but keep this recording, Sam. Just in case… anything happens to me out here. Matt or Katie will know how to decode it. Hope everything’s fine back in Earth orbit. Tell Colleen hi for me too, I’ll write her later this week.”

When he shuts the recording off Keith joins him on the lower bunk. 

Atlas’s eyes are still narrowed. “Encrypt transmission.” Keith can see the green light flare in Atlas’s pupils as the message is marked as accepted by the mail drone. 

“Getting worried?” Keith draws up one knee and lets his other leg brush against Atlas’s, casually. He wants to reassure his navigator, but…

Atlas looks back at Keith. “I don’t trust command asking something of you like… that.”

Keith freezes. Every instinct screams at him that telling Atlas was the wrong choice. It was something that should never be put into words. The expectation of silence had been seared into Keith, from early fights with other orphans, to the back room dealings in the fighters’ barracks. Squeal on someone and revenge was swift and merciless. “It was probably nothing. I must have misunderstood.” He backsteps. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. He had trusted Atlas to understand the basic law - this was something that should never see the light of day. 

Atlas shrugs. “If it’s nothing, it’s nothing. We can make a statement when we get back.” He looks so sincere. 

The fear wraps around Keith’s stomach, constricting. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea…” 

Atlas’s bluff falls. “I know. Neither do I, really.” The smile Atlas gives holds little humor. “If they ‘disappear’ us before then, at least there’ll be a record. I trust Sam. He won’t let anyone at the data before we get back.”

Keith shifts, and he knows that the only reason command could ask something like that of him is if he was completely disposable. Him and Atlas both. They could follow through on their threats and throw him in jail. He’d be bound to the surface of that dusty red planet until he died. Or kill them both out here in an accident. 

He looks at Atlas, at the solid trust that he thought this was the right thing to do. Keith shut his eyes. “You know what they’ll do to me if they find out I’ve told you…” He lets his head fall onto his knee. 

“They won’t, not before we’re safe.” 

Safe. 

It’s a foreign concept. 

“You really believe that?” Keith turns so he can study Atlas. “That we can be safe?”

“Of course.” 

It’s so simple when Atlas says it and Keith wants to believe, wants to answer Atlas’s trust in him with trust of his own. He’s just so far out of his depth with this. Give him something he could attack, or…

Keith nods, and then his tablet begins to buzz with an alarm. He runs his hands through his hair and growls. “Right, I’ve got PT, just needed to stop by here for my gear.” He reluctantly gets up and grabs what he needs, looping his bag over his shoulder. He stops before he’s out the door to say quietly, “Be careful Atlas… it’s not worth you getting dragged into this too.”

He knows Atlas will argue, knows it so well that he steps out of the door before his navigator can protest. Maybe they can avoid talking about this at all. Give him an enemy he understands any day over these twisted orders… wasn’t command supposed to be on their side?  


  


* * *

  
“You shouldn’t be here,” Keith says, wiping his face with a small towel. This level was technically for fighters only, and Atlas’s bright white casual clothes stuck out. He’d seen him lingering there as the last of the other fighters left the padded sparring area. 

“Are you going to report me?” Atlas’s tone takes on a teasing challenge. The way he smiles suggests that he knows Keith won’t. 

“What are you doing here?” Keith asks, setting aside the towel and grabbing a drink of water. “I was just about to go shower,” he nods to where the other fighters had left. 

Atlas’s eyes are bright. “Up for another spar? I may be a little rusty. They seem to think navigators thrive on yoga alone…”

Keith’s eyebrows raise. “If you want…” It’s unconventional, but he doesn’t see any harm in indulging Atlas. He sets his water bottle aside and gestures Atlas over.  
  


* * *

  
He’s used to the brute force of the other fighters. Not this. Atlas lets him charge in, takes his momentum, and drives him into the padded floor. His breath is slammed from his body and he gasps. Atlas leans further into him, pressing him into the mat. “What are going to tell the commander?” Atlas’s voice is almost conversational; despite the hushed tone. Keith can feel his lips at his ear, keeping the conversation between them and only them. 

Ah. So Atlas was still dwelling on Bering’s orders. Keith had tried his best not to think about that assignment. 

Although maybe thinking about it is better than thinking about the was Atlas is stretched out above him. Keith shuts his eyes. He’s never been religious but he sends prayers to anyone, anything, that might be watching over him. He breaks the hold, but there’s a blush fighting its way up his neck that has less to do with exertion and more to do with the body pressed against his. 

He considers the question as he struggles free. Keith pushes Atlas’s shoulders down into the mat, leaning down over him so that he can whisper in the navigator’s ear. “I’ll tell him I tried. That I failed.” He has to straddle the other man’s body, trying to immobilize his leg. The thin workout clothes aren’t nearly enough of a shield between them, and he’s intimately aware of the contact. 

Atlas taps out before Keith really embarrasses himself. He jumps back, hands coming up and ready to circle. Atlas is slightly slower to stand. 

“Regretting this?” Keith teases, trying to shake his body’s response. 

Atlas’s smile widens and he beckons Keith closer with curled fingers. “Don’t go easy on me now, Prometheus.”

Keith grits his teeth and ducks under the high kick Atlas aims at him. Atlas is fast. He should have expected it. 

They trade a flurry of hits before Atlas grabs his arm and uses Keith’s own momentum to throw him. Keith's shoulderblades hit the mat and Atlas follows, curling up over him. His wrists are trapped in one of Atlas’s hands and they’re suddenly pulled tight overhead. “There’s another way.” Atlas presses the words into his cheek. 

Keith can’t help it. He feels the blood rush south, feel himself start to grow hard. Please don’t notice. He struggles, but more to hide his growing embarrassment than to break free. 

“What are you thinking?” He hates himself when the words come out in a rush. His heart is beating too fast. He jerks his leg up, trying to break the hold, twist free. Atlas smirks, and grabs his knee, twisting it out to the side and pressing his bodyweight firmly over Keith. 

“Yield,” Atlas instructs. 

His thighs rub against his hard-on and yielding is the last thing that Keith wants to do. He bares his teeth, but it’s an empty threat. He can’t move. 

His pride stings. Atlas lets him up anyway and Keith rushes forward, not giving Atlas the time to reset. He sweeps his legs and follows him down. They roll and Keith manages to end up on top. 

Atlas looks to the side, away from Keith’s direct stare. There’s a thrill in his chest. Atlas is yielding to him like that. The adrenaline spikes in triumph. 

“What if you didn’t fail?” Atlas shuts his eyes as if he can escape the words. 

Keith sits back, startled. “What do you mean?” His weight isn’t behind the pin anymore but Atlas doesn’t put up a fight.

There’s an embarrassment in Shiro’s face. “If we pretend it worked...?” 

Keith shifts.

Keith watches at Atlas’s scars go pale. His embarrassment shows in the flush. “It-it’d be one way for us to stay safe…”

Keith isn’t sure the navigator knows what he’s asking. “It’s not just holding hands, Atlas.” 

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing…” Atlas frees his wrists, lets them travel up Keith’s thighs. He pushes on Keith’s hips, pushes him back until Keith can feel how hard Atlas is beneath him.

Heat floods through him. He can feel his ears burn and his heart is suddenly thundering loudly. “Atlas…” he whispers. 

It’s hard to consider anything but the man beneath him. But he could. He could jump into that lie. He could convince himself and Atlas that they’d need throw everything they had into make it convincing. His stomach twists and knots. 

It’d be so easy. 

But his heart… he knows what he has to do. 

He shakes his head. He can feel his hair stick to his lips. Atlas’s hand is gentle as it strokes the strands back behind his ears. Keith suddenly can’t look down. It feels too tender. Too real. His breath catches in his tightening throat.

“I can’t…”

He lifts to his feet, gathering all of his willpower. 

Atlas follows. 

Keith starts grabbing the things he left at the side of the room. The emotions are too much. 

“Prometheus…” Atlas grabs his wrist to stop his frantic movements. “We don’t have to, it was just a suggestion…” Keith can see the concern in his grey eyes.

That wasn’t what Keith wanted. He pulls his wrist free. “I can’t just fake it—” he realizes he’s on the verge of panicking and tries to breathe, tries to calm his nerves. 

“Forget I said anything…”

Keith can read regret on Atlas’s face, and he shakes his head again, not sure how to say this. “It’s…” Keith’s eyebrows crumple together and he wants to scream rather than talk about this. Words are so clumsy for what he wants to say. 

He pulls Atlas against him and Atlas obliges, easily moving into his space. Keith loops his fingers through the loops over Atlas’s belt and shuts his eyes tightly. He can’t watch Atlas’s reaction. “I want to so badly… but you just pretending to be in love with me would kill me.” He takes in a shuddering breath. 

“Prometheus…” Atlas’s voice is so tender. It’s too much, and Keith shakes his head, trying to recover his sense of dignity.

Prometheus forces himself to pull back his hands. He needs to stop touching Atlas. He grabs his bag and twists away. “Just forget that though,” he says quickly. He’s desperate for a cold shower. He hopes that everyone else has left the showers by now. 

Atlas doesn’t let him escape, and Keith finds himself pinned to the wall. 

“What I feel is real.” Atlas’s eyes search his own, and his lips are so close. There’s a moment where Keith thinks he’s going to kiss him, but Atlas turns to the side and blows out his breath. 

He sounds frustrated. But he turns back. His lips are close to Keith’s again. “Just… think about it,” he says, and then leans back, grabbing his own gear. “Let me know what you want to do.” His smile is pained. “No pressure either way.”

The shock of it freezes Keith’s limbs. He wants to think about, wants to consider it, wants to burn the last few minutes of Atlas’s body against his into his brain. He hadn’t let himself think about them like that before.

Hadn’t let himself think that maybe, just maybe, his feelings were something more. 

And reciprocated.  
  


* * *

  
The helmet and virtual reality visor feels heavy on his head. The screen darkens his vision. He can barely make out the edges of the combat room curving around him. Keith shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet and sets his shoulders back. Poised. Waiting. 

This should be a distraction. 

He usually enjoys target practice. But now it feels like can’t find that state of flow where the outside world drops away, his whole mind focused on the exercise. 

It should be such an easy commitment. Just a simple yes. 

Keith slowly turns, head tilting as he scans the room trying to keep fluid despite the tension in his shoulders. 

Through his visor, a tiny spark lights up red in his peripheral vision. He whirls as a second one appears. 

His fists flash out in quick succession. The targets blink out, replaced by the lights on his gloves flaring in confirmation of the hits. 

Keith returns to the balls of his feet. These exercises used to be enough to get his adrenaline pumping but it has started to feel hollow. Just something else on his scheduled checklist. If they do end up in any situations 

He sees another red target flash out of the corner of his eye and kicks, the sensors on his boot flaring once, confirming a hit. 

The first shriek of the klaxon makes him jerk. For a moment he thinks it’s part of the program’s virtual reality, something thrown in to distract him from combat. 

He lashes out at the next target, then realizes the door to the training room is hissing open, disengaging in response to something outside of his control. He lifts his visor. The lights of the battleship corridors pulse a bloody red, and the klaxon blasts again. 

When the siren fades out the tinny computer voice is still narrating his session. “Target missed. Target missed. Target missed.” 

Adrenaline floods his system. He slams a hand on the panel to end the program and runs, racing towards the hanger. 

The alarm only electrifies the fighters. The loudest of them is bragging about how many Galra he’s going to take down. Keith has no attention to spare for them as he strips, sealing his body into the tight flightsuit. He tucks his helmet under his arm and sprints towards the Defender. 

He spots Atlas join from across the flight deck. He waits under the wing of their starfighter, but something seems off when Atlas jogs closer. 

There’s something in Atlas’s gaze that seems a bit vacant. “Hey,” he says. He looks around quickly, but everyone in the hanger is scrambling towards their own ships. The soft whoosh of maneuvering thrusters starts to sound from the leading edge of the squadron. Blue team was moving into position. 

This might be it. 

Worried, Keith pulls him close, presses him against the hull of the ship so that he can’t escape. It’s force of personality mostly. He’s not sure he could manhandle Atlas if the other man wanted to resist. 

He shoves his other thoughts out of his mind. 

“You’ve got this,” Keith said softly. “Just like in the simulator.” Slowly, it seems like Atlas starts to focus on him again. Keenly aware that they’re very visible, Keith goes to lay his hand on his shoulder but it slides awkward over the curved reinforced joint of pale armor. He ends up with his hand cradling the back of Atlas’s neck. It’s more intimate than he’d anticipated and suddenly needing the contact, needing the reassurance, he impulsively pulls Atlas close, resting his cheek on Atlas’s chest. It didn’t matter that they were in public. 

“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” Atlas asks in a whisper. “This isn’t my first time in combat.” 

“There’s no one I’d rather fly with.” 

The alarms are still sounding, and he starts to hear the rush of engines engaging as the leading line heads out. Keith reluctantly steps back, uncurls his hand from Atlas’s neck. He searches Atlas’s eyes. If they survive this, he knows what he’s going to go.

That’s one more reason to get back. He tries to put that into his expression, because he’s not sure how to say it. He’s not sure if he manages it, but Atlas nods, and Keith takes it as a signal. They climb up the ladder, dropping into their seats. Keith runs through the pre-flight checks as quick as he can. He can feel the ship stir to life beneath him, a sense of power and freedom the simulators never got quite right. 

He holds his breath as the floor drops away, and Atlas steers them out into the dark. There’s no slow entrance into the battle. The Galra ships swarm over the starfighters as they blast free from the sides of the _Titan._

The radio channels fragment into a series of clipped commands. Keith can only overhear a small portion of them, and even that he tries to tune out, tries to let his consciousness blur enough that he can just focus on the enemy ships nearest them. Nothing else matters. 

“Shit,” There’s a flurry of curses over the com as the full extent of the enemy fighters start to appear on their heads-up displays. Keith searches the skies ahead of them, trying to catch sight of the actual ships. They’re small and dark, and the seconds thunder by before he can finally resolve small flashes of metal. And then it’s less difficult, because they’re firing, and lasers streak across the viewscreen, highlighting the enemy. 

Atlas’s elegant maneuvers send them spiraling through the oncoming Galra. Keith grits his teeth, trying to merge with the ship, hoping he can anticipate Atlas’s moves as he grips the triggers. 

“Trust me!” Keith yells. In determination, he curls over his controls like he’s about to physically pounce. 

The Galra cruiser looms large ahead, a massive shape blotting out the stars ahead of them. It’s moving slowly now, and there’s dimming lights that The Galra fighters flow away from it, parting as if they were a sea. 

Terror rises, acidic in Keith’s throat. It’s too large an enemy for them to take on. 

It’s Atlas’s reassuring voice that cuts through the panic. “We need to clear some of the Galra fighters.” It’s obvious, but helps to refocus Keith, and he settles his thumbs over the controls. The stars blur as Atlas guides them after the first wave of Galra. Keith squeezes the triggers, sending deadly attacks into Galra flightpaths. 

On the locked channel they can hear whiny feedback rising as the _Titan_ charging its massive antimatter cannons. 

Silent explosions mark the targets Keith hits, and he starts having to squint against the backdrop. He’s only half aware of the other starfighters near them, Atlas somehow keeping the _Defender_ in attack formations that let Keith rain destruction ahead of them. 

“I’m heading left, keep an eye out!” Atlas shouts, and takes the _Defender _into a long swoop, twisting the ship to avoid incoming fire.__

____

Prometheus’s blasts sear a spotty trail into their path, anticipating Atlas’s flight. A handful of the little Galra fighter drones bloom into violet deaths. The Defender and other starfighters chew through the swarming enemy ranks. The Alliance starfighters are spread thin though, and it barely feels like they’re making a dent. 

“ _Titan_ ’s antimatter cannons firing.”

Shiro says it matter of factly as they drop away from the line of fire. Keith resists the urge to shut his eyes. Soundlessly, a thick blast of light appears to their left. He blinks it away, the afterimage of a shield arcs around the Galra mother ship. 

“Cannon’s recharging, ready in two minutes, keep them distracted.” Atlas relays the important commands he’s hearing over his headset. 

“Right,” Keith says, and starts launching fire ahead of the enemy ships. 

“Shit,” Atlas curses as the Galra battlecruiser fires. The stream of light doesn’t seem to end. When he can see again, the _Titan_ ’s side is darker, streaks molten metal glowing bright against the char on the hull. “Titan’s taking heavy damage.”

“That cruiser isn’t going to bother with smaller targets,” Keith says through gritted teeth. He feels Atlas’s frustration but can’t see a good way to draw fire away from the Titan. 

In the end it’s a simple choice, even if it’s a stupid one. 

Every so often, the massive enemy ship looms over their horizon, a terrifying swollen shape, the long leading horseshoe arching in violent purple threat. The Galra fighters are gnats compared to the cruiser, difficult to see. The heads up display helpfully outlines them, too many triangles.

The scouting patrols they’d taken down before were nothing compared to this concentration of enemy fighters. Keith’s blood runs cold. They weren’t going to get out of this alive. 

Steady on then. They could at least take out what they could. Mars, Earth… other battleships would be along. Hopefully they could stop what the _Titan_ couldn’t. 

The Defender swerves and dips, coordinating with the _Titan_ as she levels her antimatter cannons. “Blast in five,” Atlas says tersely, and with a stomach-emptying swoop they swing clear of the cannon trajectory. 

Keith throws his arms forward, shooting at the oncoming wave of ships. He anticipates Atlas’s movements as the navigator has them soaring between patterns of enemy flight, spinning to keep from any of their shots from landing on their vulnerable hull. He blasts the enemy head on, easily anticipating the moves of the ship beneath him. 

A surge of bright blue-white light makes him squint. His face shield darkens momentarily, but he still has the afterimage. He winces as a violet stream returns fire. 

“Shields on the _Titan_ are weakening,” Atlas confirms, sounding grim. 

“Atlas…” he says softly, then stops. There’s not much else to say. “We need to go after the cruiser.” Not the drones. There’s only one way to stop this. They’re here for a cause that’s greater than either of them. The stars stream ahead as they swing, and there’s a long moment before Atlas answers. 

“Our lasers won’t do anything against the cruiser’s shields,” he says finally. 

Keith has no way of looking at Atlas. “Not our guns then,” he says softly. They have enough fuel, and with enough momentum they might be able to turn the _Defender_ herself into a weapon. 

There’s silence for a moment. “There has to be another way.” There’s a note of resignation in Atlas’s voice as he realizes what Keith is suggesting. 

Keith lets his silence answer for him. The space battle is a little surreal. He can see the explosions, the lasers tearing through ships as the first wave of starfighters crash into the oncoming Galra. 

“Prometheus…” Atlas sounds wounded, but isn’t offering any other suggestions. 

Keith can’t decide whether to laugh or to sob. He can feel his eyes water, and takes out a few nearby fighters in angry defiance of the emotion. If this was just him it’d be easy. But if they don’t do this, they’ll be just as dead, either taken out by the battle or in slow starvation and oxygen deprivation after the _Titan_ is destroyed. 

It’ll be quick, he reassures himself. At least there’s that. 

“Prometheus…” he repeats his task name. “Atlas. They really got us good with those names, didn’t they?” He needs to talk, because if he stops talking then he’ll think about it too much. “We were doomed from the start.” 

The cruiser looms closer. On the displays he’s seeing less of the Alliance blue. He wonders what soldiers they’ve already lost. The Galra, marked with their red outlines, keep coming, seemingly unending. 

He swallows. He wonders if it seems less real to Atlas, if staring at a nav-globe shields him from the sight of their death looming closer and closer. 

Keith clears a path from them to the cruiser, guns blazing in a futile effort to not get blasted before their death can actually mean something. 

He’d thought getting away from the colonies would have been enough. That flying through the stars would be a reward in itself, but as the ship blocks out more and more of those stars his chest feels like it’ll break open. 

“I wish I could have kept you safe…” he whispers. Then he clears his throat. “Aim for the cannon. If we can’t take them out maybe we can at least destroy their main weapons.” 

Maybe everyone else will get to go home. 

He doesn’t expect his life to flash before his eyes, but he does think about the man sitting behind him. Thinks of the nights he spoke almost dreamily about exploring more of the galaxy, full of optimism over how they could use Galra technology to help everyone back home. How peaceful he looked, asleep on the bed next to his. 

Keith’s heart clenched, violently crying out for everything that he’d never get to experience. 

He can’t see the stars anymore. The engines vibrate beneath them and he assumes they’ve passed through the Galra shield. Keith closes his eyes. 

He tries to picture something hopeful, the kids on the colonies playing in a world without threats from deep space, but his thoughts return to the man sitting behind him. 

“My name is Keith,” he chokes out, desperate for a connection, something else to hold on to. Maybe if he can shed Prometheus’s name he can avoid his fate. 

“Keith…” he hears Atlas repeat, voice soft. 

It flares in his chest, a warmth, a tingling. There’s promise there, a kindness not shown to him by others. He wishes so hard that he could keep them safe. Because he loves… 

“My name—” 

The explosions sears bright through his eyelids and his thoughts fly apart with the ship.  
  


* * *

  



	5. Chapter 5

Keith opens his eyes. Or tries to. He can’t see anything but black.

No, not quite black. Maybe it’s not dark after all. It’s just nothing. There’s a sense of things coalescing, and the nothingness fades a little, until he can see the vague suggestion of a horizon. 

When he looks down, he’s standing, outlined in hazy purple, almost a part of the nothingness himself. 

He hadn’t expect an afterlife. 

A sound; slow and crashing like cymbals played back too slowly. When it repeats, he thinks it might be a heartbeat. The void’s heartbeat? His own heartbeat? He can’t feel his heartbeat. He doesn’t feel like he really has a body anymore; not when he’s transparent, an illusion. Time seems to stretch on slow. It’s surreal. Disorienting. It’s so empty.

“Atlas?!” he shouts, or tries too. 

The void swallows the word, as hungry for sound as deep space. 

He clenches his fists, tries to move forward. He thinks he can move, but nothing shifts along the horizon, and there’s nothing near him to judge his own motion by.

Another of those crashing heartbeats and he feels like he’s falling where he’s standing. The horizon doesn’t move and he jerks back reflexively, trying to find the surface when none seems to exist. The nothingness shifts around him, reluctantly loosening its python coils. 

He yells again, wordlessly, trying to figure out what he’s meant to do in this surreal place. He feels a hint of motion in the hollow behind his breastbone, feels something here for the first time. He grips at his chest, feeling nothing. Pale blue fireflies explode from under his hand, the darkness expanding between them. In their wake they drag feeling around his body again, except it’s too much, and not enough, and nothing makes sense. He can feel wings unfurling, the powerful stride of a lion in motion, rushing forward, so much power, and—

Keith first feels the restraints around him, a sensory pull against his shoulders and he feels tears pull at his eyes in relief. The cockpit crystallizes out of the air around him, sound following. His teeth are clenched, bared, head thrown forward and hair wild as it escapes his helmet, obscures his vision. 

He reflexively clenches his fists around the targeting handgrips, shooting a string of useless laser fire into deep space. He gasps, panting. The _Defender_ is intact around him. 

“Atlas?” Keith forms the word carefully, suppressing the way his body aches and claws for breath. It hurts in a way the momentary emptiness hadn’t. This can’t be real. This can’t be real. They should be dead. 

And yet…

“I’m here…” Atlas replies, his voice unsteady in Keith’s ears. Behind them, the brilliant explosion of the Galra cruiser brightens space, expanding and drowning out the stars. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Keith answers honestly. 

For a moment he struggles, the stars ahead blurring as Atlas circles them back towards the battle. 

“Did you… feel something?” Keith asks, hesitantly. He touches his fingertips to his thumb. Solid. Reassuring.

“I felt… something…” Atlas sounds as disoriented as Keith feels. 

Without the cruiser, the Galra drone ships have gone dark, lifeless. They spread out into space, a diluting cloud of new comets. There are clusters of bright explosions where some of the Alliance fighters are taking them out for the hell of it. 

But there’s time to breathe. The battle is over. 

There’s a blast of chatter in his ear as Atlas opens the communication lines. Keith winces, the sudden noise overwhelming. The relief and celebration is obvious though and he distantly realizes that it’s because of them. 

The comm light pulses command blue and the background cacophony mutes abruptly. The commander’s voice is steady. “All flight teams recalled. Good job out there.”

* * *

We’re alive.

The words pulse through his head; shoved there with every violent beat of his pounding heart. 

We’re alive. We’re alive. 

With nothing left to do Keith sits there, stunned numb and silent. Nothing seems real as they return to the _Titan._ Atlas takes care of the calls, his voice reassuring in its normalcy. 

Time stutters. The ship settles to the hanger deck. 

There’s a sigh as the starfighter powers down. The cockpit feels too quiet, only the ticks of the cooling engines breaking through the blanketing hush. Keith looks down at his body as if it belongs to someone else. His arm shakes as he pushes open the hatch. His legs threaten to drop him back down into his chair as he climbs up out of the starfighter. 

He can focus on one thing at a time. He sees Atlas emerge from the other compartment. Keith’s vision hones in on the hand that’s offered. He moves to clasp it, still feeling like reality is distant. 

Atlas uses their celebratory gesture to pull him in close. Despite the calmness that Keith had heard over the com there’s an enthusiasm in Atlas that belies his unshaken exterior. Keith would have staggered against the force of his embrace, but with Atlas’s arms around him he can barely move. 

“We’re alive,” Keith whispers, the wonder of it still undulled.

Or maybe they’re not? Everything feels unreal. It was as if the shock of the explosion had cocooned him against the world; wrapping him in layers of soft disbelief. 

“Yeah,” Atlas whispers back. Keith can feel the words against his temple. 

Keith pulls back a bit to look at Atlas. He’s alive. Questions were starting to tear in through his numbness. 

“How did we make it out?” 

The relief is effervescent in Keith’s veins, he’s lightheaded with a thrill that’s too much for him to contain. And when Atlas looks up and meets his gaze, the connection between them locks into place. It grounds him, and yet it’s almost too intimate. Overpowering. There’s only a brief moment before the eye contact becomes too much. He laces his hands behind Atlas’s neck and stands on tiptoe so that he can press their foreheads together, shutting his eyes. It’s enough to just feel Atlas there with him. 

After a long pause, Atlas shakes his head. Keith feels the movement. “It wasn’t anything I did. We shouldn’t have made it.”

It’s not something that Keith can believe though. Keith reaches out for Atlas’s hand, pulls it over his chest. He encourages Atlas’s fingers to uncurl, until they’re pinned just above his beating heart. “We’re alive.” 

Atlas breathes out, a relieved laugh catching low in his throat. “We’re alive,” he confirms. The gentle press of Atlas’s hand on his chest feels like a promise, and Keith needs it. He needs the touch, needs an anchor. He needs to not be in public with this need racing through his body. Keith feels a keen sense of loss as he pulls back, looking over the flight deck, but Atlas slips his fingers between Keith’s and pulls Keith back to his side. There’s something easy and absolutely unselfconscious in the gesture. Visceral hope flares to life in Keith’s gut. Atlas tugs him once, him towards the ladder. There’s a hint of something else in his face, and Keith desperately wants to interpret it as not just a reflection of his own desire. 

They slip through the shouted congratulations, the ragged cheers of other returning pilots, the general chaos of mechanics making the initial assessments and refueling. There’s a defiant, celebratory air over everything. Atlas smiles, and captures Keith’s hand again. Nothing but that smile matters. They reach one of the lifts and Atlas waves back at someone calling to them, something that doesn’t pierce through Keith’s focus. 

As soon as the door shuts and Atlas turns to him the sense of relief and celebration shifts. The elevator suddenly feels too small to contain the emotions linking the two of them; this feeling is expansive, like it could contain universes. 

“I almost didn’t get to do this,” Atlas says. Keith’s heart lurches. 

Atlas leans down.

The kiss is tentative. The soft breath, the touch of warmth against his lips stuns him. Atlas’s lips brush along his own, the smallest movements sparking heat that spills in a spearing flood towards his guts. Keith accepts the hesitative softness only as long as it takes his brain to catch up to the situation. He lets his eyes shut, but reaches up to hold Atlas to him. He grab Atlas’s uniform, fists tight in the fabric as he demands more. He pulls Atlas down against him. Shame is a distant memory. He wants to be lost in this. He needs this. The heat builds between their bodies, and slowly, Atlas shifts, his own grip intensifying, pulling Keith harder against him. 

They break apart only when the elevator gets to their level.

Keith can’t help the smile that spreads across his face. Atlas pulls him back in, unwilling to let him go. Keith can’t stop smiling, and the kiss is a tight press of taut skin. Their breath mingles as he gives an embarrassed huff of laughter. His cheeks hurt but he can’t seem to tamp down the joy that’s soaring up inside of him. He can’t get his face to soften enough to mimic the velvet, pliant kiss of earlier, so he slips his tongue out, a teasing brush along Atlas’s upper lip. He pulls away, hiding his face and tugs Atlas back out, wanting to get to their room. 

Atlas moves faster, pinning him against the wall with one step. There’s a thrill of being trapped like this, reminded of Atlas’s strength. He pushes his hips out, grinding lazily against Atlas’s thigh. He lets Atlas lick the soft sounds from his lips. Nothing else could possibly matter. The elevator is beeping, but neither of them care, not when Atlas deepens the kiss. The heat of his tongue is going to be seared into Keith’s mind, the slip of it against his own, knowing that Atlas is feeling this all too… Keith’s harder than he’s ever been. He wants to remember it all, experience it all. His own motions stall, his grip softens, and he relaxes into Atlas’s hold, letting himself be guided, letting himself be held. He presses into it, tries to fuse them together; Atlas’s touch makes him burn hot enough to solder metal.

Seemingly satisfied, Atlas steps back, and Keith worries if his legs will hold up. Somehow they get to their room. Atlas’s hand strokes lower on Keith’s hip, and Keith looks back at him, their gazes drawn together.

Atlas shifts it’s to draw the fastener of his own pale flightsuit down to his waist. He looks down at Keith, his eyes blown dark and hungry. 

It’s a deliberate invitation. 

Keith slips his hand inside, tracing the edge of the tank top underneath and rucking it up as he strokes his hands upwards. He flattens his palm against Atlas’s chest, the swell of muscle dulling the rushing beat of the life within. 

When Keith’s gaze slips upward he can see Atlas’s heartbeat in his neck. He only has to move slightly before his lips touch Atlas’s neck. His skin is soft, he can feel that heartbeat strong underneath his lips. He keeps it gentle. Chaste, almost, as he presses his mouth higher, nosing under Atlas’s broad jaw. He wants everything. He wants to take this slow, wants to remember every moment, and wants to throw himself into freefall, take everything Atlas offers. Excitement that threatens to shatter his self-control. 

“Keith,” Atlas whispers. This close, Keith can feel the way his name vibrates through Atlas’s chest. It’s another shock, another reminder that what they just went through was real. As real as the flesh beneath his hands. Keith leans his cheek against Atlas’s chest. He wants to sink into the heat and solidity of Atlas’s embrace. He’s full of adrenaline, full of want but more than that, too. He needs to connect, needs something more, needs to let Atlas know… “You don’t know how much you mean to me, Atlas,” he stumbles a bit, because he has no other name besides his partner’s task name. For a moment he’s scared he’ll be overwhelmed by the sensation, the pitiful need he has to express this, scared the emotions that threaten to choke him with their intensity will break free in tears. He needs this too much.

Atlas closes his eyes. His hands stroke absently up and down Keith’s sleek black flight suit, and Keith isn’t sure which of them it’s meant to be soothing. His gaze returns to the door. They’d locked it when they came in. “My name is Shiro,” he finally whispers. 

“Shiro…” Keith repeats, tasting the name on the tongue. 

“Keith.”

His name on Shiro’s lips is enough to make him almost lightheaded even now. He wonders how it’ll sound, if Shiro’s voice breaks with passion, if he’ll plead, if he’ll command. He arches up to initiate another messy kiss.

They struggle together against the confines of Atlas’s flight jacket, freeing him from it. As Shiro pulls off his tank top his dogtags fall with a gentle sound back onto his sculpted chest. 

He wants to be closer. He pulls Shiro in tight to him. His legs spread for Shiro’s thigh, and Keith rocks forward into him again. It’s desperation. It’s the need to feel. The friction makes his mouth fall slack and he arches back. Shiro’s hands support him for a moment, holding him close. Then they find the fastener of his own flightsuit, and a chilly line splits open across his back. Keith rapidly moves to help, fumbling with yanking the sleeves off of his arms. He keeps coming back to kiss Shiro, again and again, as if Shiro is the only oxygen in the room. He’s too focused to try to make it sexy, he just wants Shiro, just wants them both free of their clothing. With an impatient noise against Shiro’s lips he kicks off his boots, finally freeing himself of the confines of his lower suit. 

Shiro had sat to undo his own boots, had got them off when Keith pushed him down against the lower bunk. He urges Shiro to scoot along with him, to pin him to the narrow bed beneath. It’s only the thin material of Shiro’s own pants separating them now, and Keith ruts his hips along the weight that’s growing more solid underneath him. 

Shiro’s teeth delicately scrape over the artery in his neck, and Keith is suddenly so aware of his own racing pulse again as he shudders and grinds down with a bit more desperation. “Patience,” Shiro mumbles into Keith’s skin. 

Keith doesn’t dignify that with a verbal response. He strokes his hand down Shiro’s chest and stroking over Shiro’s nipple. It hardens beneath his touch, the skin pebbling. Keith pinches it slightly. He’s thrown forward with Shiro’s response; the thrust of Shiro’s hips knocking him off balance. Shiro holds his breath and Keith strokes his fingers over it, soothingly. He hides his wicked smile into the junction of Shiro’s neck and shoulder, and pinches his other nipple. Shiro’s response is more measured, less surprised. One hand holds Keith’s hip, and Shiro gives a slow thrust, sliding teasingly against Keith.

Shiro’s fumbling with something overhead with one arm. Keith tries to calm his breathing, desperately wants this to last. He can sense Shiro growing harder underneath him as they rock together. 

Shiro takes his hands off of Keith and twists apart a little tin. Lube. The reality of the situation suddenly crystallizes around Keith. It’s a dash of sober reality and he sits up. 

Shiro pulls Keith up on his chest, high enough so it’s easy for him to reach back. Keith rolls his hips, watching Shiro’s tensed abs beneath him. 

Shiro’s grip tenses, pulls at his glutes, encouraging him to move in those rolling thrusts. It’s 

He tenses as Shiro’s fingers slip into his cleft. They run teasingly along his skin, settling in to draw circles around his tight furl. Keith tilts his head back. He’s sensitive there, every nerve tingling with the intimate touch. He’d never trusted anyone like this before. 

Shiro eases off. 

“We don’t have to,” he whispers. 

Keith reaches behind him and blindly grabs for Shiro’s wrist. “Don’t you dare stop now.” He guides it back to his ass. 

He leans back and steadies himself with a hand on Shiro’s thigh. With the other he searches for Shiro’s cock. He cups his palm around the outline, gripping it through Shiro’s pants. He can feel it react under his hands, giving a lazy twitch into touch. He’s big. Keith runs his hands lightly up and down the swollen shape and Shiro tenses underneath him, his own hands stilling and then pulling away.

Keith shifts to get a better angle. Shiro’s hands return to him, slick and teasing. The circles start to press more heavily into his flesh before Shiro breaches him, a fingertip forcing him to give around it. 

“Relax…”

Keith huffs an embarrassed laugh and wets his lips. He manages to relax his gripping hand at least, stroking it over Shiro in apology. 

“You look amazing.”

The words are whispered, and seem so honest. It’s a surprise enough that Keith opens his eyes. His resistance must have softened as well, because Shiro’s finger is slipping deeper inside him. He looks down at himself in something like embarrassment. He’s so hard, and as he looks down at Shiro, he can see with a faint sense of embarrassment that he’s wetting Shiro’s abs with a smear of precome. 

His own abs flash in his lean stomach as he shifts, unsure of how to take the compliment. But when he looks at Shiro he can’t find the words to deflect it. Not when Shiro is looking at him with such a look of lust. 

As Shiro moves he can feel another finger at his entrance. Shiro gently works it in. Keith bends his chin to his chest and takes in quick little sips of air as the stretch flares with brief pain. Shiro’s fingers still, and Keith lets his hand drift to his own cock, As he adjust he slowly rocks his body back into Shiro’s hand. He twists his fist over himself slowly, the vulnerable headspace almost overwhelming. But it’s Atlas —Shiro. He sinks into the support of Shiro’s body. Shiro lets him set the pace for a moment. 

“Hey, come here,” Shiro says. Keith’s lashes lift and he finds Shiro looking up at him. Shiro tilts his chin up briefly, and Keith lets himself go, letting his elbows bracket Shiro’s face, bringing their faces close instead of hiding his reactions in Shiro’s chest. “Feel okay?” Shiro whispers. 

Keith doesn’t trust his voice. He nods, letting his hair fall forward. Shiro works him open. He tries to stay quiet. Shiro’s lips are soft as they kiss his cheek, the side of his mouth. Keith blindly shifts a little, moving in to set his lips against Shiro’s. It’s not much of a kiss. He’s aware of the way he’s holding his breath, letting it out in short little exhales. Shiro licks gently at his lips until Keith reciprocates. Shiro’s free hand strokes over his back, long comforting lines that chase away the tension in his body. By the time he works a third finger in, Keith is still quiet, but he gives little gasps. He’s more relaxed as he stretches across Shiro’s body, rocking against him again, finding friction where he can. 

Shiro lets his fingers slide free, and Keith winces with the sensation. 

“Sit up,” Shiro whispers with a kiss. 

Keith sits up, pressing at the top of the bunk for balance. Shiro shoves his pants down, reaches between them to slick himself up with the lube. For a moment, Keith watches, hypnotized by the easy familiarity of the movements. Shiro holds himself like an offering, his eyes dark and not leaving Keith’s face. 

Keith reaches back, putting his hand around Shiro’s and slowly lowers himself. It’s challenging. Keith’s eyebrows knit together and his hand tenses over Shiro’s. His thigh trembles. 

“Is it to much?” Shiro asks, gentle. His other hand goes to Keith’s side, comforting. 

“It’s good.” Keith’s voice is tight with concentration. He feels like it takes forever to encourage his body to give around the girth of Shiro. Shiro slips his hand free from beneath Keith’s, wipes the lube on the bed. He stretches them upwards, running his hands up Keith’s chest. Shiro’s thumbs press at Keith’s nipples.

Keith hisses and leans back, slipping down a little further as he arches gratefully into the distraction. 

A smirk plays at Shiro’s lips and he scrapes his nails lightly across them. Keith squirms and tenses. It makes Shiro gasp, and Keith laughs a bit breathlessly at the turnaround. 

“Harder,” Keith whispers. 

Shiro obliges, pinching. The brief pain flares bright and melts into warm pleasure. Keith uses the flaring heat, rocking his hips with it, slipping deeper on each glide. Shiro’s thick, and the pressure feels like it’s at the edge of what he can take. When he feels the press of Shiro’s hips in his inner thighs he takes a moment to just breathe. His muscles betray him, twitching with the intensity. His body can barely handle it. He can feel sweat bloom on his skin, burning hot but immediately chilling. 

“God, Keith…” Shiro whispers, and hearing his name in that broken hoarse admiration is so much. His stomach flicks inward forcing a quick exhale, and Shiro groans with the movement, his hands tightening. 

Shiro moves fluidly beneath him, a slow pistoning up. 

Keith hisses and drops his hands to Shiro’s chest to hold himself up. “Just a moment,” he pleads, desperate. 

Shiro throws an arm over his face and makes a noise that could be pained agreement. 

Slowly, Keith pushes himself upright. His first movements are tentative, barely anything but the pure sensation of skin against skin, being connected like this. 

Shiro encourages him with broken, guttural noises, hands smoothing over Keith’s thighs in repetitive strokes. Keith bottoms out and bites off the part of him that wants to whimper. He moves forward again, and Shiro catches him, supporting his waist as he raises his own knees. He cants forwards at an angle. Keith struggles to remember to breath in rising waves of pleasure. He lets Shiro move him, he can’t think, he’s going to drown in this bliss. His breathing is ragged, and he presses his face to the bed behind Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro keeps moving slightly, keeps shifting the angle. 

Keith cries out and this time he can’t help it, the pleasure is so sharp it does draw mist to his eyes. “Yes,” he chants into Shiro’s shoulder. His body goes rigid, unwilling to give up that spark that hits him, winds him tighter as Shiro’s slow rhythm starts to pick up. 

He feels like he can’t stand it for much longer. It’s too much, too good. Something inside Keith shatters. The noises he’s tried to hide inside spill over, when he bites at Shiro to stifle them just dull into muffled growls. He feels feral, wild with the need that’s taken over his body. 

There’s so much satisfaction in having Shiro moving underneath him it’s hard to focus on anything else. Keith raises his head, lips demanding against Shiro’s. When he needs to breathe, he breaks off, nosing along Shiro’s jaw, biting lightly just because he can, suckling at the flesh of his earlobe. His teeth graze the sensitive skin and Shiro’s sharp inhale is like ambrosia. 

He pushes his nose into Shiro’s neck, teasing the delicate flesh with light nips, soothing the areas with licks and kisses. He can’t shake the sudden desire to sink his teeth in hard, like that will somehow make it easier to stand this pleasure. His hands knead into Shiro’s chest and he tries to push himself up, slowing the rhythm. 

Shiro reaches between them and Keith watches. Shiro takes hold of him with an easy confidence that Keith can only hope to fake at this point. 

He arches his back and shifts forward, thrusting into Shiro’s loose grip with an embarrassing desperation. It’s unintentional. He doesn’t want to shut his eyes but Shiro’s hand on him is so much. 

He tenses, thighs trembling where they’re split over Shiro’s hips. He tries to keep their movements aligned, ends up pushing back to meet Shiro’s hips when he edges away from his hand. The pleasure is almost too sharp, and he suddenly wants to shy away from it. It feels too large for him, overwhelming like a storm front building, the air just as charged and sharp. There’s an edge in the sprawling pleasure, a pain attached more to giving up this control than to a physical ache. 

He flinches as Shiro’s movements push him closer and closer to that edge. It’s getting unavoidable. He scrambles, his hands tightening on Shiro’s chest. “Gonna come,” Keith whispers, a pained edge to his face as he pants the words out. He hopes his long hair shields his expression. He feels too raw, too exposed. He bites his lip and the sudden pain barely slows the inevitable. 

But Shiro’s hand is there, smoothing the curls behind his ear. Keith’s eyes pinch shut, and he doesn’t want to contemplate the face he must be making. Shiro’s thumb is gentle, stroking against his cheek and Keith turns blindly, pressing a kiss into the palm of Shiro’s hand. 

He lets his chest sink towards Shiro’s. He wants Shiro to take hold of him, wants to be taken roughly, forced over the edge that’s building. “Please,” he chokes out. His toes curl and grip into the bedsheet as his body tenses. But the hand on his cock follows the movements of his body, the way he’s letting himself just sink into and rock with Shiro’s thrusts. He wants to scream. It’s a delicious, frustrating tease, and Shiro’s thumb flicks lazily back and forth across the underside of his crown. 

His tension ratchets higher. He can still feel the pressure building to intimidating heights beneath his skin. The release is going to be too much. His body flinches with his shaky inhales. “Please,” a begging note slips into the thready words. 

His quivering muscles are threatening to give out, to just drop him onto Shiro. He grits his teeth, waiting for one of the swipes of Shiro’s thumb to set off the spark that will ignite his body. It’s so close. Just out of reach. 

The hand on his face shifts, and cards through his hair again. It starts out gentle, but pulls into a fist, forcing Keith’s head up and back, pulling his back gently into an arch. “Yes—” he gasps out, letting Shiro control his body, letting him take control. It’s something more, the sharp surprise of the pull. He thrusts backwards, gasping as Shiro’s hand finally closes around his cock. He leans into it, feels the angle shift enough, and that power, that intensity that had been building into thunderclouds suddenly breaks free. 

Keith’s mouth falls open with the sensation. It’s more than anything he’s felt before. He’s falling and dizzy, the universe moving up through him, held to reality only by Shiro’s body. The surges of pleasure keep crashing, his body jerks with them, outside of his control. He’s vaguely aware that Shiro has stilled beneath him. When he looks down he can see the opalescent streaks of his powerful release spilled in arcs from Shiro’s shoulders to his abdomen. He’s panting, his heart has the rapid patter of a machine gun, and he feels wrung out and exhausted in the best possible way. 

Shiro’s hand is wet with it, and when he rubs it into Keith’s crown, Keith gives a throaty keen. He thrusts lazily into Shiro’s hand, and the aftershocks are enough to make him sink lower. He reaches back, letting himself touch where they are joined. As Shiro moves his hand over Keith’s cock he can feel the way it makes his muscles contract, tightening on Shiro. He loves the way he can see the effort on Shiro’s face. 

“You’re so hot,” Shiro whispers. 

Keith lets a small smile quirk his lips. “Fire-bringer,” he deflects to his task name with a shrug, slumping forward bonelessly atop of Shiro. Shiro lets go of his oversensitive cock and wraps him in a hug instead, still slowly thrusting. Keith wants to keep going but his senses are slow and dull with satisfaction, he feels heavy and distant. He feels like he can’t hold himself up. 

He can feel it when Shiro laughs a bit underneath him. “You okay?”

“Mmmhmm.” Keith nuzzles into the side of Shiro’s neck. There’s a dreamy slowness to reality that he just wants to soak in. “You can keep going.”

The ripple of Shiro’s muscles is a visceral pleasure as he rolls them over. The wall and narrow bed make it difficult, and Shiro ends up with one leg off the narrow bed, tugging Keith gently so that he aligns with the edge of the mattress.

The post-orgasmic haze makes Keith compliant. He lets Shiro reposition them, only letting out a complaint when Shiro’s movements make him slip free. Shiro disentangles himself slowly from Keith. 

Without being pressed to Shiro, Keith can’t escape how exposed he suddenly feels, and he pulls his knees in, half-attempting to cover himself. He grabs the pillow, folds it so that there’s something between his head and the wall. When he looks up again Shiro is rubbing more lube over himself. 

He can feel his spent erection try to perk up at the sight. Keith shifts, lifting his head so he can watch better. 

Shiro’s strokes speed up. Keith has a flash of worry, that Shiro is going to find his end like that. “Come in me,” he finds his voice. The words teeter between a command and a plea. 

“You sure?”

Keith gives a determined nod. 

Shiro leans in, pressing Keith’s knees into his chest to kiss at him, loose and wet as he jerks himself closer to the edge. Keith kisses back, squirms his knees out from in between them so that he can wrap his legs around Shiro. He ends up a bit twisted, Shiro’s leg on the bed forces that side higher, but it’s enough for him to encourage Shiro closer. He wants him to come too, wants to feel it inside him, wants more. Keith can feel the quick movements of Shiro’s knuckles against the soft inner skin of his thigh. 

Shiro’s hand moves to his knee, pushes it gently outwards. Keith’s cheeks heat, knowing how exposed he is like this. Shiro tugs his hips up a little higher and Keith strangles the whimper that wants to his throat. He throws his arm over his face and drags the corner of the pillow across it. 

Shiro’s fingers draw lines through the dewy sweat behind his knee. Keith jerks that leg away, ticklish. 

“Let me see your face?” Shiro’s voice is tight, Keith can still feel the movements as his hand works him closer to his own edge. 

Keith bites the pillow and shakes his head. 

Keith feels the blunt girth of Shiro slide between his cheeks. It’s softer than fingers, more give, and the anticipation staples Keith’s stomach down to his spine. He squirms lower as it glides across where he wants it. Again. And again. Sweat and lube make it easy, he can feel it almost catch on his rim, but it moves on. He lifts the pillow with a glare.

Shiro meets his eyes and without looking down he pushes his cock into alignment. Keith can’t help it; his first instinct is to tense as Shiro nudges forward. He can’t resist and with the lube Shiro pushes forward relatively easily. He squirms as Shiro draws back, staring down between them as he thrusts forward again. There’s a momentary relief as Keith feels his body close around the wedge of Shiro’s cockhead, but then Shiro pulls back, pulls out. “Relax,” he whispers, before sliding in again. Keith tries, but the sensations make him arch off the bed, twist his head to find another bit of the pillow to bite. Shiro stills, and with a few more breaths, Keith does relax, enough that the slow glide of the rest of Shiro’s length is relatively easy. 

“Feels deeper this way,” Keith whispered, locking Shiro’s hips against him for a moment as he adjusts.

“Too much?”

“No.”

Shiro starts to move, really move. His hand skips over Keith’s oversensitive cock when Keith flinches at the touch, and ends up flattened over Keith’s stomach. The weight of it holding him down makes him wish that refractory period wasn’t real. “Shiro—” 

Shiro curls over Keith’s thigh, pulling him up to join him at the thrusts, forcing himself deeper. Keith arches against Shiro’s hand, cants his hips to chase his own pleasure as Shiro pushes in. It’s an echo, a dull memory of his orgasm but it’s tantalizing in it’s own way, like it could build to something more. He stops trying to hold back, letting out little noises when Shiro hits that spot. He doesn’t think he’ll get there. Shiro’s rhythm get ragged, rapid thrusts and pauses as he regroups. Keith shifts, slipping an arm underneath his own legs to stroke feathery touches along Shiro’s balls. He can almost feel them tighten as Shiro presses in one last time with a low noise more animal than human. 

Keith feels Shiro pulsing inside him. He didn’t know that was possible. Keith pulls his hand back, following the base of Shiro’s shaft to feel the way he’s stretched so tight around him. 

After a moment, Keith tugs at Shiro’s arm, pulls him up and onto the bed. Shiro goes easily, carefully sliding a shoulder under Keith and pulling him against his side. Keith shifts lower, so that he can rest his head on Shiro’s chest, listening to the slowing of his pounding heart. He draws a hand lazily up. The old scars have new company. There are scratches across Shiro’s chest, red marks that he must have put there. Guilt makes his eyebrows draw together. “Sorry,” Keith whispers, touching one of the angry red lines. 

Shiro captures his roving hand and kisses the fingers. “Mark me anytime,” he says, voice low and promising. He pulls Keith closer. 

Keith feels lips at his forehead and he tries to summon the energy to reciprocate. He ends up just mouthing lazily at Shiro’s chest, too tired for proper kisses. 

He’s half asleep when Shiro summons the energy to sacrifice one of their sheets to clean up. Keith lets him wipe them down, but reaches out to stop Shiro from setting up the upper bunk. 

“Stay close.” Tonight, he doesn’t want to be alone. Not after everything. 

Somehow, they make the narrow bunk work. They’re half entwined, limbs lazily locking them together. Keith’s body is exhausted, it feels like there are weights pinning him to Shiro, to the bulkhead he’s half pressed again. He’s hyper aware of the man sleeping next to him.

Maybe not quite sleeping either. They’re both breathing quietly, deeply. The closeness of Shiro’s body… it’s too new for him to relax into sleep. 

But maybe, just maybe, this could be something he could get used to.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

Shiro dries his hair as he walked back into their cramped room. The group showers had been mostly empty, thankfully. He’d been able to linger under the hot water, easing the satisfying ache in his muscles. He misses the station and it’s private bathroom.

Keith’s already back in the room. Shiro’s attention lingers for too long on Keith as Keith pulls on his casual fatigues. He walks up behind Keith, smoothing damp hair out of the way so that he can kiss the back of his neck.

“You’re distracting,” Keith mutters, but his breath leaves in a half-laugh.

Shiro indulges himself, lets his hand drop to trace a lazy pattern on Keith’s thigh, pulling Keith back tightly against his body. “Think the fighters’ll have the usual drills later?” he asks.

“I think we’ve got another sector to clear debris from.” Keith cranes around to meet Shiro’s eyes. “But we should be on regular hours.” He leans back and presses a quick kiss into the side of Shiro’s mouth. It’s casual; intimate, rather than passionate. As if it were something that could become common. Shiro’s chest constricts with the thought, and how much he wants that.

“See you after dinner then?” Shiro asks, tugging Keith to face him so that he can kiss him properly.

“Yeah,” Keith says when they break apart. “Yeah.” Shiro smiles as Keith looks back at him with a spreading grin. It’s something so new and so precious. Tonight feels too far away.

Everyone in the nav-lab was going to know something’s changed because Shiro can’t stop himself from smiling.

* * *

  
It’s several days later when the _Castle_ docks with the _Titan._ Shiro had thought it would just be a kiss-and-go, claiming some supplies from the diplomatic vessel as they passed. The _Titan_ was heading back to Alliance controlled space, but the ships had been docked together for hours.

  
He hadn’t expected to be summoned to meet with Commander Allura herself. Even sitting behind a desk, she looks ethereal; otherworldly. Shiro isn’t sure that mods alone are capable of creating the type of beauty that gathers around the young woman.

  
She gestures to the seats in front of her. “I believe apologies may be in order, Lieutenant.”  
Shiro shakes his head slightly at the title, but sits where she commands. The rank is a reminder of his past. “Here I’m Atlas.” He gives her a smile to soften the correction. Navigator was as much of a rank as he wanted.

  
“You were.” She raises a single thin eyebrow. “Consider yourself promoted, along with a commendation, for the destruction of the Galra battle cruiser.”

  
Shiro freezes. “Thank you ma’am,” he says, training taking over and ensuring the proper words come out of his mouth while he stumbles for what he really wants to say. “That’s generous.” He pauses, and considers what he’s heard about this commander. Maybe she’d understand. He leans in. “But I’d appreciate the ability to keep flying as a navigator.” He searches her face, hoping she’ll understand.

  
She twists in her chair, looking out at a viewscreen instead of meeting his eyes. Shiro starts to sweat. She doesn’t answer him, not directly. “You may be aware of the use of alien technology in some of the ships?”

  
Alien tech. _Galra_ tech. Shiro feels ice grow protectively around his spine.

  
“I’ve heard rumors.” Shiro finally says.

  
She turns back to him quickly. He feels pinned in place by her intense stare. “Only rumors?” Her eyes shimmer with something other, something that pierces into his soul. He wonders just where Commander Allura came from.

  
“Only rumors, ma’am.”

  
“Hmm.” She tilts her head and activates a screen set into the desk. “The records from the _Titan’s_ battle show you were lost. There’s a full three seconds where the _Defender_ doesn’t appear on any scans.” She taps at the blip that’s there for a moment, and then not.

  
Shiro presses his lips together. “We were close to the explosion of the enemy,” he says. “I don’t have any better explanation than that.” But he thinks of the night that had followed, and rubs at his prosthetic arm. He thinks of the way Keith’s eyes had been golden. The violet in his irises. He swallows the thought of the memories. It’s not his to share. But he wonders…

  
“Ah. But I do.”

  
Shiro can’t read her expression.

  
“My guess is that you and your fighter managed to activate a prototype that had been fitted to the _Defender._ ”

  
“I’m not sure I understand, ma’am.” He forces his face into that blank mask, letting the challenge show in his own slightly raised eyebrows.

  
“I think you understand more than want to admit.” She pushes her screen away, clearing the recordings with a gesture. “Let me make this clear that this conversation is classified, Atlas.” She narrows her eyes. “The jumpdrive uses… ancient, alien technology, something that the Galra themselves have only managed to build a few examples of.” She steadily meets Shiro’s eyes. “Us having the ability to travel through wormholes gives us a much stronger position during negotiations.”

  
Shiro pushes back in his chair. “Wormholes.” He repeats the word skeptically, his mind still whirring over the revelations. He wondered at just what additions were in his arm even now. Had he imagined a sheen of purple at his fingertips? Suspicion starts to rise in his chest.  
“Jumping through space. It wasn’t an equipment malfunction that led to the _Titan_ losing track of the _Defender._ ” Allura crosses her arms as her eyes pierce into Shiro. “Abel in the _Reliant_ did something similar, before jumping from deep in Galra occupied space back to Mars. A journey that should have taken months in a matter of moments. You could do that too.

  
“The desire to protect… the emotional energy that comes with love and survival, it was enough that your very quintessence, your energies and life force, could activate the jumpdrive. The energies that are generated by such strong emotions can be channeled.” She leans forward. “You could learn from the others that can access and we can create a fleet that could travel with such speed…”

  
Emotions? “Just emotions?” Shiro rubs at the lines incredulity etches into his forehead.

  
“’Just’ emotions,” the commander repeats with a little laugh. She shakes her head a little, as if to clear it of something. “The apologies are for how this was brought about. It seems some of the outposts had their own ideas of how to… coordinate this.” She twists her face into a frown. “There will be repercussions for that, and compensation for those recruited unknowingly into Project Thebes.”

  
Shiro leans back in his chair. So not his arm, then. Not… anything Galra. He blinks slightly, trying to clear away his own theories while Commander Allura continues.

  
“There’s a position for you, if you would like to accept. We’ll be looking into this technology with the guidance of science advisers from the Galra themselves.

  
“The _Castle_ is heading to the final rounds of negotiations. There’s been a change of leadership in the Empire - and the new Emperor Lotor is much more interested in peace than his father was. Technology exchange will be part of the bargain.”

  
“It’ll mean a shift to the more academic stream, reinstating your rank and salary to match.” She touches one of her screens and gestures towards Shiro, sending him the information. She tilts her head and considers him. “We’d be glad to have you test the new ships, if you’d like to continue flying.”

  
At one time in his life it would have been enough. “And… Prometheus?”

  
Unexpectedly, she smiles at him. “It <em>does</em> seem to take both partners to generate the emotions that can manipulate the quintessence field.”

  
Shiro nods to acknowledge the offer. “I’ll have to ask him.” Shiro hesitates. He can’t get his hopes up for this just yet. He starts gathering armor to shield himself against an eventual negative answer from Keith. After all… “He’s talked about returning to Mars, after this assignment.”

  
Commander Allura’s expression doesn’t seem disappointed. “Things are going to be changing out here.” She stands, and moves to the edge of her desk. “We’ll retrofit some of the ships with the technology Emperor Lotor is willing to share. It’ll take time. There may be some time to take leave before being reassigned.”

  
It’s generous. Shiro feels out of touch, overwhelmed by both the offer and the changes. Had things proceeded so quickly?

  
She studies him. He leans back in his chair.

  
“We’ll maintain our fleets, Lieutenant. There are still supporters of the old Emperor out there, and we’ll aid in defense against them as best we can. If you’d rather remain on active duty, that could be arranged as well.”

  
Shiro can tell his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Perhaps. I’ll talk to Prometheus and give you an answer.” If there’s a chance to be among the stars, where he doesn’t have to fight, he knows what he’d rather do.

  
But he doesn’t know if he wants to do it alone.

 

* * *

  
  


There’s an offer of a new assignment in his inbox, a generous salary increase. Keith hovers his thumb over the option to decline, but hesitates. He looks up at the bottom of the empty bunk above him. Keith closes the message without selecting any further action.

He’s not sure when his plans got derailed - somewhere in between meeting Atlas and getting to know Shiro, he guesses.

Keith flicks back to the news packet the ship had gotten that morning. Every agency is putting out updates. There’s lots of speculation on the Emperor-elect.

“Did you get the message that they’ll be decommissioning the _Titan_?” Keith asks when Shiro appears in the door.

“It came through this morning. Iverson had mentioned something about it earlier when we talked, though.”

“What are you going to do?”

Shiro pauses and leans his hip against the dresser. “I’ve got a few options.”

Keith sits up on the bed and draws his knee up to his chest. He leans closer to Shiro, even as he looks down at the bed and picks at the threads. “It seemed so simple before.” All he had wanted was to fly in something fast, to get the money, to return to Mars in a position to get his father’s things out of storage and actually do something with them. Now…

“What’s the complication now?”

Keith looks up at Shiro and gives a wry smile. In its own way, it’s still simple. “I want to go where you’re going.” His heart feels squeezed out by the amount of emotion he carries in his chest, it beats quickly against the pressure.

Shiro moves slowly to sit beside Keith. Keith feels the mattress sink beside him, making it easy to lean in to Shiro’s side.

“You said before that you wanted to go back to Mars… is that still something you want?”

Keith feels selfish, but slowly, he nods.

“If you don’t want to join the research team they’ll offer me a Captain’s position,” Shiro admits.

“That’s wonderful,” Keith says. He means it. A promotion is the least of what Shiro deserves. meaning it deeply. He thinks about the future drawing the two of them apart. "What ship?”

“It’s unclear. The negotiations are sort of stalled. There’s a lot to be reconfigured in the fleets, and there’s talk of new builds that could support both human and Galra crews. It seems interesting.” Shiro says, his voice low as he cautiously stretches an arm around Keith.

Keith hesitates, torn between sinking into the comfort that Shiro’s touch offers and scrounging in the fields around him for the rocky material to rebuilding the walls around his heart. Everyone leaves. It’s the way of things.

“But it’ll take some time to see where the new technology exchange programs end up. And doing desk work until that happens doesn’t interest me. So I decided to take a sabbatical.”

Keith pulls back, looking at Shiro in slight disbelief. “A sabbatical,” he repeats.

Shiro offers a small smile. “It’d be good to take some time.” He looks over at the window of the station. “I’ve never been to Mars, you know.” He pulls Keith close.

Keith doesn’t even try to muffle his own smile. “Is that a hint, old-timer?” he asks.

“Would you let me go with you?”

Keith sighs and leans his head back against Shiro’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you’d even think you need to ask.” He tilts his head so that he can kiss Shiro’s jaw, mouthing at the growth of stubble. He blindly finds Shiro’s hand and laces their fingers together.

“You can come if you want,” Keith says, thinking it better to say it out loud. He leans to the side a little, trying to get a good look at Shiro. “How much do you know about the colonies?”

“I’m starting to think that a lot of what I was told was wrong.” Shiro leans back, pulling Keith with him to sprawl along the narrow bed. “I want to see it with you.”

“It’s not…” Keith thinks, trying to find the right word. “It’s not much,” he warns, as Shiro’s free hands starts toying with the edge of his shirt.

“Mm. But you’ll be there.”

And Shiro doesn’t give Keith the change to protest further.

 

* * *

  
_A few weeks later._

  
Keith swings his leg off of the hoverbike and stretches his arms overhead with a grimace. It’s a longer trip out to the outpost than he remembered. He’d made the trip a few times as a teenager. Not that he could get into the little property, but it had felt like an anchor to his past, and it was a place where he could go to be alone.

  
He steps over to where Shiro is standing, waiting for him, and leans into his side. “It’s not much,” he says softly, watching Shiro look at the little prefabricated building. He twists his mouth to the side, his stomach twisting as he worries about how it looks to Shiro. Shiro’s expression is hidden behind dark sunglasses, but he squeezes him reassuringly.

  
Keith glances at him and can’t help but smile. Shiro looks good in the colony jacket he’d bought. Not enough to keep him from standing out, not with his height and pale hair, but outside, bundled against the cold he seemed to blend in well enough. They’d been in the main dome for a few days, sorting things out. And now…

  
“If it was worth buying someone else would own it by now,” Keith says softly, as much to himself as to Shiro. The bank, or rather, whatever gang was in charge of the bank had reclaimed it after no one continued to pay the taxes after Keith’s dad died. Keith steps carefully onto the porch, but the construction looks like it’s held up. Here at least. In the distance, the tattered cover of a rusting hydroponics plot flaps in the breeze.

  
“Why was this built so far from the dome?”

  
Keith looks back at Shiro and pulls a hand free of his heavy glove. The cold immediately bites into his flesh. “They were looking at the possibility of ranching. The wolves were too much of a problem though. They’re pretty wild around here.”

  
Shiro nods and looks up, hunched against the chill of the martian wind.

  
Keith stares at the door, the thick lock that had barred it since he’d been taken away. Since his dad had died.

  
“Are you sure about this?” Keith looks up and meets Shiro’s gray eyes. “I still could help with the payment.”

  
It was pretty much all of his pay, including the generous bonus that had come from ‘Project Thebes’. The apologies hadn’t been recorded.

  
Keith glares up at Shiro. “I don’t want your money.” He pulls down his scarf so that he can show that he’s smiling a bit, although anxiety doesn’t let him hold it for long. _Please understand,_ he thinks. “I need to do this myself.”

  
He holds his wrist up to the lock and transfers the funds. More money than he’s ever seen in his life disappear from his account. The lock hums and blinks green.

  
It’s his.

  
Keith pushes open the door, and mutters a brief prayer, not knowing what he’ll find. He reaches back and his hand find’s Shiro’s, and he holds onto it tightly as he takes a few steps in to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He finds the light switch and hits it, holding his breath.

  
He knows it doesn’t look like much but Keith’s eyes swim as he looks at the threadbare couch, the bare metal frame he’d stubbed toes on. The old, shrouded machines of his father standing like guardians or gravestones, crowding the space of the living room. The powdery dust chases them in before Shiro shuts the door.

  
Shiro’s silence feels loud.

  
Keith steps through the room, lost in memories. There’s not much inside. A single bedroom, nearly empty, save for the two bedframes. A kitchen unit, a small water closet. The whole place feels smaller now, almost claustrophobic. He’s looking at it from a much higher angle now, and it’s hard to reconcile the actual size with his memories of running around this place.

  
It doesn’t look like a place for a family. The weight of his memories is heavy as he pulls off his gloves to run his fingers lightly over the wall. Keith turns an uneasy glance towards Shiro, but there’s no judgment in his face. Shiro’s letting him take his time.

  
Keith turns back to his slow circuit of the room, pulling the sheets off the machines so they looked less like misshapen ghosts. The machines are from an earlier era; their dials and switches physical. He can still see the marks where serial numbers had been carefully filed off. He reaches for a tape, but despite being sealed against the elements, time has worn it down, and the black tape crumbles when he tries to move it.

  
He can feel his smile start to quiver and he looks out the window until he can compose himself. What had he wanted from this? There was no sense of belonging. The ache of his father’s loss is strong again, here in the ghosts of his past.

  
A creak makes him turn back. Shiro has settled himself onto the couch, looking down at it as he tests if it’ll hold his weight. There’s a growing pile of outerwear beside him. Keith adds to it as the little outpost starts to warm, dropping his scarf and gloves. They’re lucky the solar panels are still working.

  
“He loved space,” Keith said, trying to bury his emotions and feeling the heated, embarrassing knowledge that Shiro would see through it. He gestures at the machines. “Sometimes I wonder why he was a fireman rather than a navigator or something.” He looked back out the window, where he remembered the glow of the Nuevadala dome could be faintly seen at night. But he didn’t wonder, not really. The colony had needed him. It had needed all the firefighters it could get.

  
He does another slow circuit of the house, checking in cupboards and closets. Most of it had been cleared out.

  
“What are the machines for?” Shiro asks.

  
Keith tries to remember, and slowly shakes his head. “He was recording things, I think. There used to be telescopes too, but I don’t see them.” He wonders if they are still in the colony somewhere, if some other parent is showing their child the different planets and stars and galaxies at night. His throat tightens up.

  
“There’s not really enough out here to stay.” Keith decides, looking out the window.

  
“Not tonight,” Shiro agrees. “But we can pick up some things in the city tomorrow.” He reaches out towards Keith. Keith lets himself collapse against Shiro, more emotionally drained than he’d prepared for.

 

* * *

  
It was a slow process. Once they had mattresses out there the rest was simple, and Shiro made several of the trips alone after discovering that Keith was just as likely to come back with a bag of canned food and some of the strange mushroom and algal foods that were ubiquitous across the colony.

  
Shiro takes over, getting enough that they can camp there rather comfortable as Keith turns his attention to the machines. They don’t seem to want to work, and the living room grows a collection of tools and frustration. He hesitates to get in the middle of it, sensing that Keith needs something from this that Shiro won’t be able to give him. But he gets teary eyed when Shiro brings home a small backyard telescope and tacks the star charts on the wall of their bedroom beside his hoverbike poster. He smiles when Shiro splurges on fresh groceries instead of canned things. When he sets aside his tools he can watch as Shiro tidies the wreckage of the hydroponics area. And Keith laughs when Shiro brings home a small collection of cacti for the windows but carefully marks on his calendar the days when they are supposed to get a tiny ration of water.

  
It hits him, when he comes back in from a trip to the hardware printers that Shiro’s been making the little place a home. He just stops in the doorway.

  
There’s a glow around the place that there hadn’t been - it’s lived in, now. There’s some sense of what had been missing, and he can feel it now, when he looks around there’s always a sign of him and Shiro, mingled easily together.

  
Home.

  
He drops the two new tools on the closest machine. He pulls off his heavy outer layers and steps across to the kitchen, where Shiro is studiously giving way too much care to heating a can of stew. There’s a fresh salad at the side, and Keith wraps his arms around Shiro and just rests his head against Shiro’s back. “Thank you,” he whispers, voice rough with everything he doesn’t know how to say. It’s coming home to Shiro. It’s overwhelming.

Shiro leans back and laughs. “Thank me if I don’t burn this…”

Keith presses his smile into Shiro’s shoulder and tries to hold back tears of happiness for everything else. For finally belonging somewhere. For knowing that this could be anywhere, for them, and they could make it their own.

Shiro stirs the pot, oblivious to Keith’s moment. “I was thinking, if the new tools don’t work, I think I’ve got some friends that could help you get those machines going again...”

 

* * *

 

“No way!” Pidge’s eyes are shining as she pulls off the panels of various things, connecting strings of adapters between her extensive collection of tablets and the machines.

  
Keith watches them warily.

  
“An original frequency modulator?! This isn’t even fully digital!” Hunk reaches out and takes the end of a wire from Pidge, connecting it to one of the dials in front of him.

  
“These are ancient!” She seems happy.

  
“But you know what they are? You can make them work?” Keith folds his arms.

  
Pidge shrugs. “I’ll try,” she says, happiness spilling over.

  
“What are they for?” Keith finally sits down, watching them work. He felt possessive, like he didn’t want to let them handle the only links he had left to his father. But he needed to know what had obsessed his dad.

  
“It looks like most are receivers of some sort,” Hunk comments, his own enthusiasm at a much lower wavelength than Pidge’s excitement. “X-ray, gamma-ray… some are taking feeds from telescopes and others have been… modified somehow?” he asks as if Keith might know. “There’s some stuff in here that doesn’t really seem to belong.”

  
“What a retro collection.” Pidge bounces between things.

  
“Will someone know they’re being turned on?” Shiro asks.

  
“Nah, they all seem to be passive. They don’t have the equipment to transmit anything back.” Hunk narrows his eyes and reached in deeper into one of the machines pulling out a small block. “Come here, you. I see you there fouling up the amplification chamber,” he muttered. “You’re not connected to anything here.” He set the block aside and reached in. “Try that now?”

  
Pidge darts over to flip a few of the switches at the top. She examines the screen of the connected tablet, and then suddenly, Pidge grins. “Got a signal. Just static, but…” she trails off as she follows a wire to one of the other units, already distracted by the prospect of finding something more interesting.

  
Hunk found a recess in the corner of the dark block he’d removed. He runs his thumbnail along the seam as Keith comes up behind him to watch.

  
“Was your dad really into SETI?” Pidge asks, the light bouncing off of her glasses as she gets another screen to light up.

  
“What’s that?” Keith asks, unsure.

  
“The search for extraterrestrial life? Seems like this was a sort of home set up. Almost like he was looking for signals from beyond our solar system. But it’s not linked with any official channels.”

  
“He liked looking up at the stars,” Keith says. The undercurrents feel threatening. “I don’t really remember much else though. Maybe that was why he had these. It would have been before we made contact with the Galra.”

  
“Before?” Hunk repeated, scratching at his head. “You sure?”

  
“Yeah. Absolutely. He… died before the attacks started.”

  
“I’m not going to insult you and ask if you’re sure you’re sure, but, uh, buddy, you might wanna take a look at this.”

  
Hunk pulls out a small violet vial out of the back of one of the box and hands it over to Keith. It was cool to the touch, but was glowing vividly.

  
“That’s definitely something Galra. Looks like a small power unit.”

  
Keith feels the room start to warp around him, and sits down a bit too quickly. He can feel Shiro appear by his side, but he can’t take his eyes off the little cylinder. “Huh.”

  
“Not big enough for a ship… but maybe something more mobile? Or… a weapon of some sort?”

  
There’s too much attention on it, on him, and Keith tries to smooth out his expression. “There’s always been weird stories out here,” he says, trying to scratch at an explanation. “Floating lights, UFO crashes, unexplained wrecks out in the desert... but they’re just stories.” And the people that talked about feeling drawn out here were usually not entirely legit, ones that would sell crystals and talk about ley lines and spirits and ghosts.

  
Shiro’s hand is on his shoulder but this time it does nothing to calm him. “Probably someone’s idea of a joke, or contraband that got hidden after the war started.” It makes sense when Shiro says it, but in his heart, Keith doubts it. Dread sits heavy on his mind. No one had gotten into the little outpost.

  
And the glow seems too close to the shimmer in the handle of his mother’s knife.

  
Was there a reason, beyond his father’s grief, for the lack of photos?

  
The room feels cold, and Keith draws his legs up.

  
“Doesn’t look like it goes with anything in here,” Pidge sounds disappointed. She completes a circuit of the room. Her prior excitement seems dulled after the tease of alien technology.

  
“That makes sense. This was just a convenient hiding place. How about you start dinner, Hunk?” Shiro’s voice is gentle but there’s enough command behind it that Hunk shrugs and gets up.

  
“Still,” Hunk says as he starts laying out different ingredients he’d brought. “I wonder what was he looking for?”

  
Keith stares down at his hand. “I wonder if he found it…” he says under his breath, and Shiro’s hand tightens on his shoulder.

 

 

* * *

 

The house is quiet again after Shiro’s friends leave, a calm peace that brings relief rather than regret. “Coming to bed?” Shiro leans against the divider between the two rooms. There’s a coolness to the house at night, and he has one of their blankets draped around his shoulders.

Keith was still sitting in his favorite spot against the window. “Do you think I really am part Galra?” Keith asks quietly . He doesn’t look up, staring intently down at the vivid purple vial in his hand. It reflects off his skin, giving him violet shadows.

Shiro puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder. He wonders about things he’s seen, of cat-like eyes in the dark, of claw-like nails against his skin. The way the handle of Keith’s knife sometimes looks like it gleams with a light that no metal should contain. “Keith… no matter what’s in your blood, it’s what you do that makes you who you are… that’s what’s important. I know you.”

Keith sits with that in the silence. Shiro’s not sure if he’ll accept it. He can tell already that neither of them will get much sleep tonight, so he takes a few steps over towards the heating block and fills a kettle.

Keith still seems lost in his thoughts when Shiro brings him a mug of tea.

“I wonder how much my dad knew?” he muses, and Shiro can hear the turmoil buried in the words.

Keith had never been eager to talk about family. “Did he say much?” Shiro asks, sitting down on the floor and resting his head against Keith’s thigh.

Keith laughs. “Not really.” He hesitates, then adds in before Shiro can ask. “My mom left when I was a baby. No other relatives in the colonies, as far as I know. None that came forward, anyway.”

There’s a long pause, and then Keith laughs, but it doesn’t have much humor. “I’m just guessing it was my mom, you know? My dad looked human. But I look human too… Do you think there were already Galra on Mars back then?”

“I think if there were, they’d stand out…”

Keith looks out at the lonely, windswept landscape and nods. He hides his thoughts.

The silence is too much, so Shiro continues. “I guess there must be, or must have been, at some point.” Sleeper agents and spies? Rebels? “But I’ve never heard of anything that suggests it.”

Keith takes the cup of tea that Shiro gives him, leaning back against the window.

There aren’t any easy answers.

 

* * *

  
When Shiro gets home, Keith is sitting in the window, braiding a dark wrap around the hilt of his knife.

“Hey,” Shiro greets him, putting down the groceries and walking over to kiss the top of head.

Keith smiles and pulls Shiro down for a proper kiss. “Hey,” he repeats. Affection shines through the simple word.

“Almost ready?”

“I will be by tomorrow.” Keith turns back to his task. They both ignore the flashes of the violet sigil beneath Keith’s palm, a light that didn’t seem to be related to reflections of the pale afternoon sun streaming through the window.

It had been doing that lately.

Shiro tosses his keys onto the table beside the tablets from the _Vaettnir_. They’d board the terraformer tomorrow, heading out to meet the research and rehabilitation fleet. The Alliance had sent them things to help prepare - translation software, the information they had on the different species that were there.

None of it felt real yet.

The new technology has opened up so much for them.

The _Vaettnir_ was a peace offering itself, a way for the Alliance to show they were willing to contribute to rebuilding planets that had been blighted during the war. They’d head out with it, do what they could to help with the relief efforts until they could rendezvous with an Altean research team, far beyond the edges of their own solar system. Alteans. It’d seemed just as unreal as the war against the Galra ending to find out that there were other planets out there with life, more than even a handful. There was so much to discover, and the use of the jump-drives was just scratching the surface.

Keith, finished with hiding the handle of his knife, drops it and its sheath onto the folded new uniforms they’d be sent. He laces his hand through Shiro’s, and looks around the packed up outpost. Everything had been placed carefully back into a storage state, the plants had found new homes, and the rest would be waiting for them when they returned after four months.

Shiro followed his gaze. He squeezes Keith’s hand as he stares at the large scanning machines; gone silent again.

“I wish there’d be answers for you here,” Shiro says.

A bittersweetness touches Keith’s expression. “There were answers. Not to the questions I thought I needed answering…” He leans into Shiro instead of continuing to speak.

Shiro knew. Chosen family was sometimes just as powerful as blood relatives. Maybe more. Shiro closes his eyes and buries his face in Keith’s hair and hopes that belonging to each other is something that’d last.

A wolf raises its thin voice to the setting sun outside.

Shiro takes Keith’s hand again, caresses over his fingers as he looks down. For a shimmering moment, Shiro can almost see the stars spread beneath them, holding the promise of anywhere they wanted to go.

~Fin~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chrysonoe’s art pieces for this Bang can be found on [ instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/By6GHbXoo6I/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link), [tumblr,](https://chrysonoe.tumblr.com/post/185710384236/heres-my-entry-for-the-sheith-prompt-bang-I) and [ twitter. ](https://twitter.com/Chrysonoe/status/1141458501417472000)


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